While the funeral procession of the late Iranian President Ebrahim Raisí and the country’s head of diplomacy, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, walked through the streets of the city of Tabriz, in northwest Iran, amid a crowd of supporters of the Islamic Republic, The country’s authorities announced this Tuesday that the next presidential elections will take place on June 28, just over a month after the accident that cost the lives of Raisí and his entourage last Sunday. The elections will be held without exhausting the legal period of 50 days provided by the Constitution to elect a new president in the event of the death of the head of the Executive, as confirmed by the semi-official Tasnim agency, linked to the Revolutionary Guard, the army parallel to the regular whose task is to defend the Iranian Islamic regime.
The loss of the president in an accident that casts doubt on the security protocols of the Islamic Republic of Iran — the helicopter had been acquired in the 1970s, according to the Efe agency — has opened a period of uncertainty, in a context of support decline of the regime by a large sector of the population and in full confrontation with Israel over the Gaza war. The Iranian authorities seem to be in a hurry to return to institutional normality as soon as possible by accelerating the deadlines for appointing a new president. The advanced age of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who turned 85 on April 19, also requires an immediate election of who will occupy the second political position in the country, only behind Khamenei himself.
On Monday, when barely a few hours had passed after the confirmation that none of the occupants of the helicopter had survived, the supreme leader gave his approval to begin the procedure provided for in the Iranian Constitution for these cases: the first vice president of Iran , Mohamad Mojber, assumed the acting presidency. Almost immediately, the new interim head of the Executive formed a council made up of himself, together with the president of Parliament and the head of the Judiciary, which met on Monday morning with other senior officials to prepare for the elections.
The electoral calendar announced by the Tasnim agency will begin on May 30, shortly after the end of the five days of official mourning for the death of Raisí and his companions, announced this Monday by Khamenei. That day and until June 3, the registration of candidates will take place, while the electoral campaign will run between June 12 and 27. The semi-official Iranian agency does not specify on what dates the examination of the candidacies will take place – necessarily between those two aforementioned periods – by the Council of Guardians, the institution in charge of vetoing candidates who are not considered sufficiently loyal to the Islamic Republic. This body is made up of 12 members, half appointed directly by Khamenei, while its other six members are elected, after approval by Parliament, for another position also designated by the supreme leader: the head of the judiciary.
Elections without democracy
In Iran, elections are not synonymous with democracy, but rather a mechanism of competition and distribution of power between elites and factions, all of whom support, to a greater or lesser extent, the regime. Since Raisí’s arrival to the presidency, in 2021, with the votes of only a third of the electorate, that power is almost completely in the hands of the so-called principalists, the ultraconservatives who oppose any reform and defend blind obedience to the supreme leader. In the March elections, only 30 moderates or reformists—supporters of a controlled opening of the Islamic regime—were authorized to go to the polls after passing the screening of the Guardian Council.
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In the next presidential elections, it is expected that this council will once again veto all reformist candidates and even conservatives who could overshadow the one chosen by the regime as its candidate for president. One of the questions of the electoral process is, according to Rouzbeh Parsi, head of the Middle East and North Africa program at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs think tank, “which reformist candidates will try to run” and how radical the Guardian Council will be. “in their vetoes,” he emphasizes on WhatsApp.
In this context, the only challenge of the next elections will be to avoid a record of abstention, which surpasses that recorded on March 1 in the last legislative elections, when only 41% of an electorate of 61 million people cast their ballots. vote. Of them, according to official data, 5% were declared invalid. If even greater numbers of Iranians turn their backs on the polls, that could further undermine the legitimacy of Raisi’s successor and, with it, that of the entire Iranian political system.
In the Persian country, abstention is assimilated to a vote of punishment, one of the few forms of rejection that citizens can express in a political and economic system whose mechanisms are almost totally controlled by the clerical establishment and by de facto powers such as the Guard. Revolutionary. The low turnout at the polls is interpreted as a reproach against the regime, especially because, traditionally, the country’s authorities have used the once high electoral participation, sometimes greater than 70% of the electorate, as a demonstration of popular support.
This challenge of avoiding a very high abstention is imposed, if possible, even more so, after the blow caused by the abrupt death of the Chief Executive. The reason is the need to avoid an image of fragility of institutions. Raisí was not only the president of the country, but one of the names that was mentioned to succeed Khamenei, whose replacement after his death – the event that can truly mark the future of Iran or cause a power vacuum – is now somewhat more in the cards. the air.
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