Khamenei urges Iranians to ignore calls to boycott voting | International News Middle East News

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The Supreme Leader of Iran called on the people of the country to participate in the voting on June 18, which will be attended by seven candidates.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, urged Iranians to ignore next month’s call to boycott next month’s presidential election after the decision to exclude several prominent figures.

Kamenei said in his speech to legislators through a teleconference on Thursday: “Don’t pay attention to those who advocate that voting is useless.” He called on Iranians to “participate” in the June 18 vote.

According to his official Instagram account, he added: “The election is held in one day, but the effect will last for several years.”

Opposition members in exile have been conducting social media campaigns, urging the people of the country to abstain from voting.

Khamenei made the above comments two days after the meeting of the Guardianship Committee. The Guardianship Committee is supervised by the top leader and consists of 12 members. Officially recognized Among the 592 idealists, there are 7 competitors, and none of them are well-known reformists or pragmatists.

The people approved by the council are the current Minister of Justice, Ebrahim Raisi; Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of the expedient council; Saeed Jalili, former nuclear negotiator; and Amir Hussein, deputy speaker · Amir Hossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi; former vice president Mohsen Mehralizadeh; central bank governor Abdolnasser Hemmati; legislator Alireza Zakani.

“The respected Guardianship Board has performed its duties and duties deemed necessary, [and] Identify candidates. “

There are two main groups in Iran’s political arena: reformists who are more liberal and principleists who are political conservatives in the country. Although the division of factions is not so simple (analysts point out that there are various views on major issues within each group), Iran’s ruling elite is usually divided into pragmatic factions and aimed at strengthening international relations with the West. Disagreements between the hardliners. Be vigilant about reforms.

It is believed that the disqualification of the most famous pragmatists and reformists, such as the former speaker of Congress Ali Larijani and the current reformist first vice president Eshaq Jahangiri (Eshaq Jahangiri), will further strengthen the position of Lacey, who is generally regarded as a conservative. Best candidate.

In the 2017 election, Resi ranked second with 15.8 million votes, second only to the current reformist President Hassan Rouhani (Hassan Rouhani), who received 23.5 million votes.

Earlier this month, the Guardianship Board stated that it will consider candidates who are between 40 and 75 years old and have no criminal record (including political dissent) and can demonstrate at least four years of senior executive leadership experience.

Raisi said this week that since he learned of the final list (which was leaked by the hardline news site Fars on Monday night), he has been working hard to lobby high-level officials to qualify other candidates for the election More competitive”. .

Unconfirmed reports also said on Tuesday that Rouhani had sent a letter to Khamenei asking him to allow reformers and moderate candidates to be promoted in order to achieve fair competition.

Opinion polls, including a poll conducted by Iran’s state-run television station this month, show that the turnout rate may be as low as 30%, which is much lower than previous elections.

The election campaign will last until June 16, and the candidates will participate in three televised debates.



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