Reform-minded Iranians boycotted election

Ebrahim Raisi, a hardline judiciary chief with a brutal human rights record, is set to win Iran's controversial presidential election, according to preliminary results announced by the interior ministry and reported by state media today.

In 1988, Raisi was part of a four-person "death panel" that allegedly oversaw the mass execution of up to 5,000 political prisoners, according to rights groups. His two years as Iran's chief justice were marked by the intensified repression of dissent and human rights abuses.

Despite numerous pleas by the Supreme Leader of Iran Khamenei urging people to vote, large swathes of Iranian society steered clear of the country's polling stations on Friday.

The preliminary tally showed that the overwhelming majority of votes went to conservative candidates, indicating that more reform-minded Iranians boycotted the election.

With 90% of the ballots counted, voter turnout stood at around 48%, according to election officials. Far fewer voters turned up for this election, which was widely seen as a foregone conclusion, than they did in 2017, when turnout was over 70%.

Many activists accused the country's clerical establishment of "selecting" rather than electing the country's next president, objecting to what they saw as a heavily engineered election designed to further entrench the power of the country's hardline clerical rulers, despite the public's calls for reforms.

2021 presidential election comes at a pivotal moment for Iran. The next government will have to confront an economic crisis exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, and calls for constitutional reform. Tehran is also currently locked in negotiations with the United States about how to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.