Conservatives take over government in Iran | VS…

Without surprises or reformist candidates in competition, the former head of the Judicial Authority Ebrahim Raisi won the Iranian presidential election comfortably and allowed the return to the Conservative government, after eight years of mandate of the moderate Hasan Rohani and with the lowest turnout in the history of the Islamic Republic, 48.8 percent.

The Minister of the Interior, Abdolfazl Rahmani Fazli, reported on Saturday, the day after the election, the final results, which gave a 61.9% in Raisi and they appointed him president-elect, without a second round being necessary.

“With the blessing of God, we will do our best to make the hope for a future now live in the hearts of the people to grow more,” said Raisi, adding that he wanted to strengthen citizens’ confidence in the government to a “bright and pleasant life together.”

The turnout was set at 48.8%, the lowest for a presidential election since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979.

The abstention thus broke the record of 57% of the legislative elections of 2020 and was well below the 73 that it had voted in 2017 for the re-election of Rohani.

Social unrest in the Middle Eastern country hardest hit by the coronavirus, US economic sanctions and the disqualification of hundreds of candidates, including reformists most likely to compete with Raisi, already foreshadowed meager turnout.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday celebrated Raisi’s election as a victory for the nation against “enemy propaganda”, in the face of calls for abstention due to the prior veto of almost all reformist and moderate candidates.

“The big winner of yesterday’s elections is the Iranian nation because it has stood up to the propaganda of the enemy mercenary press,” Khamenei added in statements reproduced by the news agency. AFP.

From abroad, Raisi was quickly praised by the governments of Russia, Syria, Turkey and Venezuela.

Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated him in a telegram and said he was confident to strengthen “constructive bilateral cooperation”. In the same vein, his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed himself: I hope that “the cooperation between our two countries will be strengthened thereafter”.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad celebrated the victory and underlined “the approach of the Islamic Revolution to manage the country in the face of plans and external pressures”, referring to the sanctions of the Western powers, which his government is also facing.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro also underlined this aspect in a statement released by his government on Twitter: This victory “ensures that Iran will continue to be free and sovereign and that despite the adversities imposed, it will continue to grow powerfully” .

On the contrary, the Iranian opposition in exile claimed that the “boycott” of the elections was “the greatest political and social blow” to the theocratic regime of the country.

“The boycott has proven and demonstrated to the world that the only vote of the Iranian people is to overthrow this medieval regime,” Maryam Rajavi, head of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), said in a statement.

At the same time, Amnesty International (AI) called for an investigation into the president-elect “for crimes against humanity such as murder, enforced disappearance and torture“against left-wing activists in the years following the Islamic Revolution.

“We continue to call for Ebrahim Raisi to be investigated for his involvement in past and present crimes against international law,” the organization said and once again accused the leader of being a member organization, colloquially known in Iran as the Death Commission which defined the death or disappearance of thousands of opposition prisoners held in 1988.

Raisi has in the past denied any involvement in this commission.

According to the final review, General Mohsen Rezai, former commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary Guards and one of the defendants in the AMIA case in Argentina, came in second, behind the former president of the Central Bank and the only judged moderate of the contest, Abdolnaser Hemati, and the deputy Amirhosein Ghazizadeh-Hashemi.

In messages on Instagram, Twitter or relayed by the Iranian media, the three candidates who faced Raisi quickly recognized the victory of the conservatives.

It was the expected end of an apathetic campaign that did not raise high expectations or mobilization in society as has happened in previous years.

Against this backdrop, even the president-elect’s campaign was austere, with few election posters in the capital Tehran, the vast majority of which only showed Raisi’s face in his usual black turban.

His main promises, meanwhile, were to fight corruption and defend the popular classes. who have lost their purchasing power due to the high inflation of recent years, the collapse of the local currency and rising unemployment.

Without needing a second round, the Conservative can now begin to prepare the first steps he will take when he takes office next August and takes command of the government from Rouhani, a reformist who has opted for a greater international openness and an expansion of individual freedoms, but whose hopes were dashed by the rise to power of Donald Trump in the United States, his unilateral termination of the nuclear agreement and a new outright standoff with Iran.

Raisi will not only have to focus on immediately recovering the economy, but he will also have to decide how to continue multilateral negotiations with world powers – including again the United States – to revive the nuclear deal and end the sanctions. that suffocate his country. .