Iran enters electoral silence amid calls to raise popular participation

Al-Jazeera Net-Tehran

24 hours before the start of voting in the 11th legislative elections and the supplementary elections for the Leadership Experts Council scheduled for Friday, Iran has entered the stage of electoral silence since Thursday morning.

With the end of the week-long propaganda campaigns, all their forms became prohibited in accordance with Article 56 of the Parliamentary Elections Law and Article 23 of the Leadership Experts Elections Law.

The elections begin at 8:00 am on Friday (04:30 GMT) and about 58 million voters are entitled to vote in them.

More than 7,000 candidates from 208 constituencies are competing for these parliamentary seats, thirty of which are for the capital, Tehran, which is the largest electoral constituency in the country.

Prior to the elections, competition in Tehran intensified between a common list of the conservative movement, on the one hand, and a list of the Building Cadres Party and another of an alliance of eight reformist parties in the opposite camp.

Electronic system
Interior Minister Abdul-Ridha Rahmani Fadli announced that about a million people are in charge of conducting the electoral process, to ensure security and supervision and to take votes in more than 54,000 electoral centers.

The elections are distinguished by the existence of electronic systems that facilitate the voting process by transferring information and data automatically.

Rahmani Fadli said that 24 of the 25 stages of the electoral process will be conducted using an electronic system, and that the only stage that will be implemented manually is "vote counting," adding that confirmation of the identity of the voters will take place through the electronic system.

The Iranian official announced on April 18 the date for holding the second round of elections, if necessary.

The authorities announced the completion of the polling stations in preparation for receiving voters tomorrow morning in order to cast their votes, and for his part, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the heads of the executive, legislative and judicial authorities have called for heavy participation in the electoral entitlement.

Invitation to participate
Khamenei called on his countrymen to largely accept the elections, saying that the intense participation in the polls will show the unity of the Iranians in the face of what he described as enemies.

Referring to the US sanctions, he said that the enemy's and friend's eyes are now seen towards Iran, where the enemies are waiting to see what the extreme pressures on the Iranian people have become.

He added that the people are fluent in what they have to do, and the elections will be an attack against the intentions of the Americans and the sinister Zionists, who are in it, he said.

He stressed that the United States would fail to cause splits between the Iranian authorities and the people, describing the vote as "a revolutionary, national responsibility and religious duty."

In a development that may affect the rate of popular participation in tomorrow's elections, two citizens died yesterday, Wednesday, after infection with the Corona virus, which is emerging in Qom, south of the capital, Tehran.