The Iranian Ministry of the Interior waited three days to officially announce a figure released by media close to the system seconds after the polling stations closed last Friday: only 25 million voters, equivalent to 41% participation. Neither one more vote nor one less vote, as became clear after Minister Ahmad Vahidi’s intervention yesterday, who pointed out that this result challenged those who had asked to boycott the elections.
“After months of bustle, 25 million inhabitants voted,” he said in the ministry auditorium, without mentioning that the participation in these elections where the 290 representatives to Parliament and the 88 clerics of the Council of Experts were elected was the lowest. of the history of the Islamic Republic. He had to spend a while to focus on the issue that everyone was talking about: the null votes, which represent 8%, of which 5% had been blank votes. Already in the 2021 presidential elections, which Ibrahim Raisi won, invalid votes had been 12.7%. That year, participation would have reached 49%, also the lowest for a presidential election.
Until yesterday, rumors spoke that in Tehran the “contaminated” votes represented the second largest volume of votes in the entire province. Even local media such as the Mehr agency mentioned that it was equivalent to 24%. Later the bulletins announced 34%, but the minister avoided talking about the provinces, including the capital, which contribute the largest number of votes to Parliament. If generally the winner of the list in Tehran always received over a million votes, on this occasion he won with 597,000.
Although the total list of seats has to be decided in the second round, it is already known that at least a third of the current Parliament, considered the most radical in the country’s recent history, has been eliminated. Some selected new names are part of the new generation of radical politicians.
