On Friday June 18, the 13th presidential election was held simultaneous with the sixth round of city and village councils elections, the first mid-term for 11th parliament’s by-election, and the second mid-term for the fifth Assembly of Experts election.
Out of over 59.3 million eligible voters in the 13th presidential election, nearly 29 million took part in the national event. Ebrahim Raisi won the presidential race with 17,926,345 votes out of the total 28,933,004 ballots, which shows 48.8 percent turnout.
Reasons for significance of the poll
The 13th presidential election of the Islamic Republic of Iran was very crucial because it was held in the beginning of the new century according to the Iranian calendar; and as a result of the United States’ so-called maximum pressure on Iran, the Iranian people have been suffering from economic woes since the withdrawal of the Trump administration from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018 and re-imposition of cruel sanctions on the nation.
In line with the sanction policy of the United States the expatriate opposition groups have been busy to sow discord between people and the Islamic government. The oppositions attempted to disappoint people from participating in the voting process and presented different polls to induce the public opinion in Iran that the turnout would be completely low, claiming that the turnout would stand at 20 to 30 percent.
Failure of expatriate opposition groups
However, their media campaign to propagate against the participation in presidential election, the real turnout was 48.8 percent. Definitely, it is worth mentioning that this amount of participation is acceptable because of the negative impact of COVID-19 pandemic and people’s concern about contamination when standing in queues as well as the effect of improper economy and livelihood on the total turnout.
The number of 48.8 percent was not predicted by the opposition and their media outlets.
The satisfactory participation frustrated the expatriate opposition groups and foiled their plots in Iran. Naturally, the turnout translates into protecting national security and interests. However, the next step is that more efforts should be done in a bid to satisfy people with the path the country is going forward and make them hopeful to the future economic situation.
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