Women supporters of Iranian presidential candidate Saeed Jalili hold posters of him during an election campaign rally in Tehran, yesterday.
DUBAI: Iran’s supreme leader urged voters to turn out in big numbers for a presidential election tomorrow, saying such a show of strength would frustrate Tehran’s enemies.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was speaking on the last day of a subdued campaign that has not produced a leading candidate from three main hardliners and one moderate. The winner will replace Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but inherit an economy struggling with high unemployment and inflation, and buckling under the weight of international sanctions imposed over Iran’s disputed nuclear programme.
The new president will also have little leeway to change major policies such as Iran’s enrichment of uranium for nuclear fuel or its support for President Bashar Al Assad in the Syrian civil war. Both are decided by Khamenei.
“My insistence on the presence of the majority of people in the elections is because the strong presence of the Iranian nation will disappoint the enemy, make it reduce pressures and follow another path,” Khamenei said in a speech yesterday, reported on his web site.
“It is possible that some people, for whatever reason, do not want to support the Islamic Republic establishment but they do want to support their country. They should also come to the polls. Everyone should come to the polls,” Khamenei said.
With 678 people who registered as candidates barred from standing in the election, the United States and the Israel — top of Iran’s list of enemies — have both criticised the ballot as neither free nor fair. Voters now have six candidates remaining to choose from — a slate dominated by conservatives who tout their loyalty to Khamenei and offer little in the way of real policy differences.
As there are no independent, reliable opinion polls on voting intentions in Iran, it is hard to gauge who will win. Reformist leaders said the last presidential election in 2009 was rigged to return Ahmadinejad to office and many mainly middle-class, more liberal voters may fail to turn out this time in the belief the same thing could happen. Iranian authorities say all polls are open and democratic.
Moderates and reformists united on Tuesday behind centrist cleric Hassan Rohani, hoping to attract the vote of Iranians hoping for more freedoms and better relations with the West.
Saeed Jalili, Iran’s nuclear negotiator has run a strong campaign, but has been heavily criticised, even by fellow hardliners, for his intransigence in talks with world powers and failing to stop the imposition of tough international sanctions.Reuters
