{"id":18757,"date":"2024-03-01T11:31:31","date_gmt":"2024-03-01T11:31:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/?p=18757"},"modified":"2024-03-01T11:32:09","modified_gmt":"2024-03-01T11:32:09","slug":"iranian-election-begins-as-rulers-seek-big-turnout-amid-rising-discontent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/2024\/03\/iranian-election-begins-as-rulers-seek-big-turnout-amid-rising-discontent\/","title":{"rendered":"Iranian election begins as rulers seek big turnout amid rising discontent"},"content":{"rendered":"

MONITORING (SW) – Iranians voted for a new parliament on Friday in an election seen as a test of the clerical establishment’s legitimacy at a time of growing frustration over economic woes and restrictions on political and social freedoms.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has called voting a religious duty, was the first to cast his vote in Iran.<\/p>\n

“Vote as soon as possible \u2026 today the eyes of Iran’s friends and ill-wishers are on the results. Make friends happy and disappoint enemies,” Khamenei said on state television.<\/p>\n

The election is the first formal measure of public opinion since anti-government protests in 2022-23 spiralled into some of the worst political turmoil since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.<\/p>\n

Iran’s rulers need a high turnout to repair their legitimacy, damaged by the unrest. But official surveys suggest only about 41% of eligible Iranians will vote. Turnout hit a record low of 42.5% in the 2020 parliamentary election, while about 62% of voters participated in 2016.<\/p>\n

State TV, portraying a general enthusiastic mood with live coverage from across Iran interspersed with patriotic songs, aired footage of people braving snow to vote in some towns and villages.<\/p>\n

Several people told state TV that they were voting “to make the supreme leader happy”.<\/p>\n

The interior ministry said 15,200 candidates were running for the 290-seat parliament. Partial results may appear on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, a women’s rights advocate, has called the election a “sham”.<\/p>\n

SEVERAL CRISES<\/strong>
\nThe parliament, dominated for over two decades by political hardliners within the religious Islamic Republic, has negligible impact on foreign policy or a nuclear programme that Iran says is peaceful but the West says is aimed at making nuclear arms – issues determined by Khamenei.<\/p>\n

With heavyweight moderates and conservatives staying out and reformists calling the election unfree and unfair, the contest is essentially among hardliners and low-key conservatives who proclaim loyalty to Islamic revolutionary ideals.<\/p>\n

Pro-reform Iranians have painful memories of the handling of nationwide unrest sparked by the death in custody of a young Iranian-Kurdish woman in 2022, which was quelled by a violent crackdown involving mass detentions and even executions.<\/p>\n

Economic hardships pose another challenge.<\/p>\n

Many analysts say large numbers of Iranians no longer think the ruling clerics capable of solving an economic crisis caused by a mix of mismanagement, corruption and U.S. sanctions – reimposed since 2018 when Washington ditched Tehran’s nuclear pact with six world powers. Efforts to revive the 2015 nuclear pact have failed.<\/p>\n

The election comes at a time of huge tension in the Middle East, as Israel fights the Iranian-backed Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza, and other groups backed by Tehran attacking ships in the Red Sea and Israeli and U.S. targets in the region.<\/p>\n

Khamenei has accused Iran’s “enemies” – a term he normally uses for the United States and Israel – of trying to create despair among Iranian voters.<\/p>\n

The parliamentary election is twinned with a vote for the 88-seat Assembly of Experts, an influential body that has the task of choosing the 84-year-old Khamenei’s successor.<\/p>\n

SOURCE: REUTERS<\/strong><\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MONITORING (SW) – Iranians voted for a new parliament on Friday in an election seen as a test of the clerical establishment’s legitimacy at a time of growing frustration over economic woes and restrictions on political and social freedoms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":18764,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[990,1,984,372,976,194,982],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-0_swnen","category-news","category-region","category-politics","category-world","category-international"],"views":43,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18757"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18767,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18757\/revisions\/18767"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}