Twenty-something years old, thin, petite, long dark hair down, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt.
That is the description of the young woman who last Tuesday, at 5:30 p.m. (3:30 p.m. in mainland Spain), approached a team from Iranian public television in Tehran, at the intersection of the central avenues of Vali Asr and Azadi.
The girl tore off her mandatory veil and T-shirt in front of the camera and, wearing a bra, she began to wave the garment over her head and shout: “Elections without votes” and “[Iranians] will not vote.”
According to the account of two witnesses accessed by this newspaper, members of the Iranian security forces beat her while they tried to cover her with a chador, the black robe that covers women from head to toe.
They then dragged her to a van, which drove away with her on board.
The cameras were there to report on a student debate about the two elections being held this Friday in Iran: the legislative ones and those of the Assembly of Experts, the body that is renewed every eight years in charge of choosing the successor to the supreme leader. of the country, something that could happen in this mandate;
the current one, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is 84 years old.
Both elections are the first to be held in the country after the protests sparked by the death on September 16, 2022 of Mahsa Yina Amini, a young Kurdish woman who, three days earlier, had been arrested in Tehran accused of not wearing her hijab.
Her death in police custody unleashed a wave of demonstrations against the regime, quelled with a repression that cost the lives of at least 500 people, according to Iranian human rights NGOs in exile.
Another 22,000 were arrested and eight young men were hanged.
The rejection that those protests expressed is still evident in gestures of civil disobedience such as that of the thousands of Iranians who do without the veil.
Added to this detachment is a serious economic crisis with inflation around 50%.
In this context, the challenge for the authorities is to achieve an acceptable participation figure.
Especially since the result of the vote is known in advance: an overwhelming majority of ultra-conservatives in Parliament and complete control of those candidates from the Assembly of Experts.
The previous preselection of candidates for both bodies by the regime has eliminated any other possibility, since almost all reformist candidates, who believe that the Iranian political system can be changed from within, have been vetoed.
Since the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, declared in 1979 that the popular vote is “the measure of the State's policies,” the country's leaders have used participation data in past electoral events, in occasions greater than 70%, to legitimize itself.
The Iranian expert Saeid Golkar, professor of Political Science at the University of Tennessee (United States), describes it as a “facade of democracy” in which the ballot boxes are placed, but they do not decide the distribution of power, “just as other authoritarian regimes do.”
“Facade of legitimacy”
“Elected institutions in Iran are only there to provide that façade of legitimacy.
They have no other function, apart from allowing a clientelist distribution of wealth among the followers of the regime and particularly of Ayatollah Khamenei,” this expert says.
If, as forecasts predict, a very high number of the 61 million Iranian voters abstain from voting, this legitimation mechanism would be disrupted.
The legitimacy crisis of the regime, which was already reflected in the poor turnout data for the 2020 elections (42.57%), would deepen.
The repression of the protests caused by the death of Mahsa Amini is another factor that suggests that this Friday that figure could be even lower, Golkar emphasizes: “Each new cycle of repression convinces more and more Iranians not to go to vote because they know that nothing is going to change.”
According to a survey by the ruling Iranian Students Polling Agency (ISPA), less than 28% of Iranian voters were sure of going to vote in December.
Another survey by the same agency this Wednesday raises that figure to 41%, while another opinion study by the Middle East Institute, based in Washington, estimates the turnout at the polls at 34% of the electorate.
Golkar believes those figures will be even lower in large cities like Tehran, where he believes participation could plummet to between 10% and 15%.
Political scientist Ali Alfoneh, from the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington (AGSIW), points out: “In Iran, the mere fact of participating in elections, regardless of who the people vote for, is perceived as by the regime as a renewal of loyalty” to the supreme leader, he assures.
From Tehran by phone, Iranologist Raffaele Mauriello, professor at Allameh Tabataba'i University, highlights that the vote “is a fundamental element of legitimation in the Iranian political system, along with others such as religious legitimacy.”
On Tuesday, the supreme leader again urged voting and defined those calling for abstention as “enemies of Iran.”
This Thursday, the Iranian media in exile
Iranwire
reported the arrest of 50 bloggers in the northwestern province of Azerbaijan.
They are accused of “inciting abstention.”
No opposition
Both the more than 15,000 candidates for the 290 seats in Parliament and the 144 candidates for one of the 88 positions in the Assembly of Experts have been preselected by the Council of Guardians, an institution made up of 12 Islamic jurists, of which six are elected. directly by Khamenei.
The vast majority of reformist candidates had previously been disqualified, so they could not even stand for election.
Only about thirty have been authorized to attend, of whom even fewer are expected to be elected, meaning their presence in Parliament will be irrelevant.
Even some conservative candidates have been ruled out for not being considered sufficiently loyal to the supreme leader.
The preselection of candidates for the Assembly of Experts has been even more restrictive than for Parliament, in what some analysts interpret as an attempt to preserve the
status quo
after the death of the supreme leader.
Even former president Hassan Rohani has been banned from re-election in that Assembly that will elect Khamenei's successor.
Under these circumstances, the Reform Front, which brings together around twenty reformist organizations, has refused to participate in elections that it has described as “meaningless, non-competitive, free or fair.”
This Thursday, teachers unions have asked teachers not to vote, according to the Persian edition of the Voice of America radio station.
Activists who supported the latest protests against the regime have also called for a boycott.
The 2023 Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi published a letter with that request on her Instagram account earlier this week: “Boycotting elections under a despotic religious regime is not a political act, but a moral obligation for loving Iranians.” of freedom and who seek justice.”
Mohammadi is serving a 10-year prison sentence in Evin Prison in Tehran.
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