Iran elections: Ultraconservative Raisi elected president as rivals concede
Ultraconservative
cleric Ebrahim Raisi was declared the winner Saturday of Iran’s
presidential election, a widely anticipated result after many political
heavyweights were barred from running.
Raisi
won 62 per cent of the vote with about 90 per cent of ballots counted from
Friday’s
election, poll officials said, without releasing turnout figures, after the
three other candidates had conceded defeat.
‘I congratulate the people on their choice,’ said
outgoing moderate president Hassan Rouhani, who has served the maximum of two
consecutive four-year terms and leaves office in August.
Raisi,
60, is set to take over at a critical time, as Iran seeks to salvage its
tattered nuclear deal with major powers and free itself from punishing United
States sanctions that have driven a sharp economic downturn.
The
head of the Iranian judiciary, whose black turban signifies direct descent from
Islam’s
Prophet Mohammed, Raisi is seen as close to the 81-year-old supreme leader,
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has ultimate political power in Iran.
Friday’s
voting was extended by two hours past the original midnight deadline amid fears
of a low turnout of 50 per cent or less.
Many
voters chose to stay away after the field of some 600 hopefuls including 40
women had been winnowed down to seven candidates, all men, excluding an
ex-president and a former parliament speaker.
Three
of the vetted candidates dropped out of the race two days before Friday’s
election.
Populist
former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, one of those barred from running by the
Guardian Council of clerics and jurists, said he would not vote, declaring in a
video message that ‘I do not want to have a part in this sin’.
Raisi’s
victory was confirmed Saturday when he received the congratulations of the
incumbent and the three other candidates — ultraconservatives Mohsen Rezai and
Amirhossein Qazizadeh Hashemi and reformist Abdolnasser Hemmati.
On
election day, pictures of often flag-waving voters dominated state TV coverage,
but away from the polling stations some voiced anger at what they saw as a
stage-managed election aiming to cement ultraconservative control.
‘Whether I vote or not, someone has already been
elected,’
scoffed Tehran shopkeeper Saeed Zareie. ‘They organise the elections for the media.’
Enthusiasm
was dampened further by spiralling inflation and job losses, and the Covid
pandemic that proved more deadly in Iran than anywhere else in the region,
killing more than 80,000 people by the official count.
Among
those who queued to vote at schools, mosques and community centres, many said
they supported Raisi, who has promised to fight corruption, help the poor and
build millions of flats for low-income families.
A
nurse named Sahebiyan said she backed him for his anti-graft credentials and on
hopes he would ‘move the country forward and save the people from economic,
cultural and social deprivation’.
Raisi,
who holds deeply conservative views on many social issues including the role of
women in public life, has been named in Iranian media as a possible successor
to Khamenei.
To
opposition and human rights groups, his name is linked to the mass execution of
political prisoners in 1988. The US government has sanctioned him over the
purge, in which Raisi has denied playing a part.
Asked
in 2018 and again last year about the executions, Raisi denied playing a role,
even as he lauded an order he said was handed down by the Islamic republic’s
founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to proceed with the purge.
Ultimate
power in Iran, since its 1979 revolution toppled the US-backed monarchy, rests
with the supreme leader, but the president wields major influence in areas from
industrial policy to foreign affairs.
Rouhani’s
landmark achievement was the 2015 deal with world powers under which Iran
agreed to limit its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief.
But
high hopes for greater prosperity were crushed in 2018 when then-president
Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the accord and launched a ‘maximum
pressure’
campaign against Iran.
While
Iran has always denied seeking a nuclear weapon, Trump charged it was still
planning to build the bomb and destabilising the Middle East through proxy
groups in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.
As
old and new US sanctions hit Iran, trade dried up and foreign companies bolted.
The economy nosedived and spiralling prices fuelled repeated bouts of social
unrest which were put down by security forces.
Iran’s
ultraconservative camp — which deeply distrusts the United States, labelled the ‘Great
Satan’ or
the ‘Global
Arrogance’ in the Islamic republic — attacked Rouhani over the failing deal.
Despite
this, Iran’s senior political figures, including Raisi, have voiced
broad agreement that the country must seek an end to the US sanctions in
ongoing talks in Vienna aimed at rescuing the nuclear accord.