Iranians voted in a presidential election on Friday amid concerns over alow turnout with the conservative head of the judiciary, Ebrahim Raisi,widely seen as the frontrunner.
Nearly 60 million eligible voters in Iran will decide the fate of fourcandidates in the fray to succeed President Hassan Rouhani, reportedAljazeera.
The Guardian Council, a 12-member constitutional vetting body under SupremeLeader Ali Hosseini Khamenei, barred hundreds of candidates includingreformists and those aligned with Rouhani.
Polls opened at 7am local time (2:30 GMT) and will close at midnight (19:30GMT) but can be extended for two hours. The results are expected midday onSaturday.
After casting his vote in the capital Tehran, Ayatollah Khamenei urgedIranians to do the same saying “each vote counts … come and vote and chooseyour president”.
With uncertainty surrounding Iran’s efforts to revive its 2015 nuclear dealand growing poverty at home after years of United States sanctions, theturnout for the vote is being seen by Iranian analysts as a referendum onthe current leadership’s handling of an array of crises.
State television showed long queues outside polling stations in severalcities. State-linked opinion polling and analysts put the hardliner Raisi,60, as the undisputed frontrunner.
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Hamid Reza Gholamzadeh, CEO of Diplo House think tank said that Raisi wasexpected to win the election.
“Based on the polls he has between 60 to 75 percent popularity among thosewho will vote today,” said Gholamzadeh.
If elected, Raisi would be the first serving Iranian president sanctionedby the US government even before entering office over his involvement inthe mass execution of political prisoners in 1988, as well as his time asthe head of Iran’s internationally criticised judiciary – one of theworld’s top executioners.
Voter enthusiasm was dampened by the disqualification of many candidatesand the deep economic malaise, which has sparked burgeoning inflation andjob losses – the crisis deepened by the COVID pandemic.
“I’m not a politician, I don’t know anything about politics,” a Tehran carmechanic who gave his name as Nasrollah said. “I have no money. Allfamilies are now facing economic problems. How can we vote for these peoplewho did this to us? It’s not right.”
