20 electoral districts, including the capital, Tehran, went to a runoff after the invalid votes received first or second place in a number of centers (Al Jazeera)

Tehran

-

After appearing to be pregnant with strange things since the opening of nominations, the results of the elections held in Iran at the beginning of this March produced unique surprises in the country’s history.

Whether in the numbers of applicants for candidacy or the numbers of those denied eligibility to run in the electoral arena, in addition to other surprises.

The reluctance to vote in the 2024 Shura Council and Experts Council elections and the decline in the participation rate to 41%, the lowest participation rate since the victory of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, was not a surprise to the Iranians.

This is because the Guardian Council’s rejection of the majority of the reformist movement’s candidates and the demands to boycott the electoral arena suggested this.

But the official results in Tehran Province, which has a population of more than 18 million people, were shocking.

In the city of Tehran, the political center of the country, the participation rate fell to 24%, of which 5% were invalid votes, at the very least.

Iranian elections infographic (Al Jazeera)

Invalid votes

The invalid votes, including white papers, spelling errors, and votes that went to people whose eligibility to run for candidacy were disqualified, occupied first or second place in some voting districts, which pushed 20 electoral districts, including the capital, Tehran, into a runoff round to decide the fate of the remaining 45 seats out of 290 in the Iranian parliament. This demonstrates the impact of invalid votes on the final results.

The current MP, Jalal Rashidi Koji, in the city of Marvdasht near Shiraz in the south of the country, received 25,431 votes, despite the Guardian Council rejecting his eligibility to run, while the first qualified candidate for the legislative elections received 18,000 votes.

As for the city of Yazd (central Iran), the invalid votes came in second place, with a very slight difference from the first-place winner from that city.

Votes decline

Official statistics show that the first winner from the capital, Tehran, reserved his seat in the next parliament by obtaining 597,770 votes, a result that was not a third of its counterpart produced by the parliamentary elections in 2020.

At that time, the Speaker of the 11th Parliament, Muhammad Baqir Qalibaf, received 1,265,000 votes.

After 4 years had passed, during which Qalibaf assumed the presidency of the legislative authority, the seasoned politician ranked fourth in the last elections, obtaining 447,905 votes.

This is equivalent to less than a third of the votes he won in the election held by Tehran at the beginning of the Corona pandemic, which then prevented many Iranian voters from voting.

Perhaps the strangest thing revealed by the official results came from the “Khoda Afrin, Kleber, and Horand” district in the northwest of the country, where one of the candidates was unable to obtain a single vote, while another received only 3 votes, in addition to a third candidate who received only 7 votes.

The loss of Sadiq Larijani was a shock to Iranians who were accustomed to seeing him in the highest positions of power (Reuters)

Thunderous failures

While candidates celebrated reserving their seat in the 12th parliament by obtaining only about 5,000 votes, including candidates from the “Mahallat”, “Nain” and “Bandar Anzali” constituencies, prominent politicians failed in the electoral arena.

Among them are Ali Motahhari, head of the “Voice of the People” list supported by several reformist parties, a member of the Expediency Discernment Council, Muhammad Reza Bahanar, and Muhammad Baqir Nobakht, Secretary-General of the “Moderation and Development” Party, Assistant to the President, and Head of the Iranian Planning and Budget Organization during the era of Hassan Rouhani.

Despite the strangeness of the Guardian Council’s rejection of the eligibility of former President Hassan Rouhani and former Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi to run for the Leadership Council of Experts, other prominent figures of jurists and ayatollahs were unable to reserve their seat in the council that elects the Supreme Leader of the Revolution, and removes him when he is unable to perform his duties. .

In addition to the failure of Mostafa Pourmohammadi, a conservative politician and former Minister of Justice, in the elections for the Leadership Assembly of Experts from the Tehran Capital District, the news of the loss of Ayatollah Sadegh Amoli Larijani, head of the Expediency Discernment Council, was a “shock” to Iranians who were accustomed to watching him on television programs. For decades,

At times as head of the judiciary and at other times as a jurist in the Guardian Council, in addition to his stay for about 24 years in the Leadership Council of Experts.

Alavi was Iranian Minister of Intelligence for a period of 8 years during the government of former President Hassan Rouhani (Iranian press)

Leadership experts

The phenomenon of the decline in the votes of the winners was not limited to the parliamentary elections. In the elections for the Assembly of Experts, Ayatollah Ali Reza Arafi won first place by obtaining 888,618 votes from the Tehran district, while former President Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani occupied the same position 8 years ago. Years by obtaining two million and 300 thousand and 492 votes.

Unlike many major cities, where the percentage of votes for the winners was low compared to the number of individuals entitled to vote, the fact that Ayatollah Muhammad Ali Al Hashem, the Friday preacher of the city of Tabriz (northwest), obtained 850,280 votes was remarkable, because it equals the total number of votes produced. The second to sixth positions are in East Azerbaijan Province.

Ayatollah Larijani came in last place among the five candidates in the Mazandaran province in the north of the country, after he was seen in the Islamic Republic among the names proposed to succeed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is 84 years old.

Thus, the result of the recent elections was disappointing to the Larijani family, which has controlled the state for decades, after the Guardian Council rejected the eligibility of seasoned politician Ali Larijani for the 2021 presidential elections, despite his continued presidency for about 12 years at the head of the legislative authority.

Observers in Iran believe that the loss of Ayatollah Larijani opens the door wide to the decline of the political influence of the sons of religious authority Ayatollah Mirza Hashem Amoli Larijani, amid accusations leveled against some of its members by former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of corruption.

Source: Al Jazeera