Judgement day for Rouhani:
Voters to choose moderate or hardliner
TEHRAN: Iranians voted yesterday in the country’s first presidential election since its nuclear deal with world powers, as incumbent Hassan Rouhani faced a staunch challenge from a hardline opponent over his outreach to the West.
The election is largely viewed as a referendum on the 68-year-old cleric’s more moderate policies, which paved the way for the nuclear accord despite opposition from hardliners.
Economic issues also were on the minds of Iran’s 56 million eligible voters as they headed to more than 63,000 polling places across the country. The average Iranian has yet to see the benefits of the deal, which saw Iran limit its contested nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of some sanctions.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the most powerful man in Iran, symbolically cast the election’s first vote and called on Iranians to turn out in huge numbers for the poll.
“Elections are very important and the fate of the country is in the hands of all people,” he said.
After casting his ballot, Mr Rouhani said whomever the voters elect as president should receive all of the nation’s support.
“Any candidate who is elected should be helped to accomplish this heavy responsibility,” Mr Rouhani said. “Anyone who is elected must be helped from tomorrow with unity, happiness and joy.”
Mr Rouhani has history on his side in the election. No incumbent president has failed to win re-election since 1981, when Ayatollah Khamenei became president himself.
That doesn’t mean it will be easy, however. Mr Rouhani faces three challengers, the strongest among them hardline cleric Ebrahim Raisi, 56.
Mr Raisi, a law professor and former prosecutor who heads an influential religious charitable foundation with vast business holdings, is seen by many as close to Ayatollah Khamenei. Mr Raisi has even been discussed as a possible successor to him, though Ayatollah Khamenei has stopped short of endorsing anyone.
Mr Raisi won the support of two major clerical bodies and promised to boost welfare payments to the poor. His populist posture, anti-corruption rhetoric and get-tough reputation — bolstered by his alleged role condemning inmates to death during Iran’s 1988 mass execution of thousands of political prisoners — are likely to energise conservative rural and workingclass voters.
“Mr Rouhani has turned our foreign policies into a mess and damaged our religion,” said Sedigheh Davoodabadi, a 59-year-old housewife in Iran’s holy city of Qom who voted for Mr Raisi. “Mr Rouhani gave everything to the US outright” in the nuclear deal.
Mostafa Hashemitaba, a pro-reform figure who previously ran for president in 2001, and Mostafa Mirsalim, a former culture minister, also remain in the race.
Hardliners remain suspicious of the US, decades after 1953’s Washington-engineered coup that toppled Iran’s reformist prime minister Mohammed Mosaddegh and the 1979 US Embassy takeover and hostage crisis in Tehran. US President Donald Trump’s tougher stance on Iran has stoked concern as well, though his administration this week took a key step toward preserving the Barack Obama-era nuclear deal.
Iran’s political system combines conservative clerical oversight and state control over large parts of the economy with tightly regulated but still hotly contested elections for key government posts. All candidates for elected office must be vetted, a process that excludes anyone calling for radical change, along with most reformists. No woman has been approved to run for president.
The president of the Islamic Republic oversees a vast state bureaucracy, is charged with naming Cabinet members and other officials to key posts, and plays a significant role in shaping both domestic and foreign policy. But he remains subordinate to the supreme leader, who is chosen by a clerical panel and has the ultimate say over all matters of state.
The race has heated emotions and pushed public discourse in Iran into areas typically untouched in the tightly controlled state media. That includes Mr Rouhani openly criticising hardliners and Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard, a paramilitary force now involved in the war in Syria and the fight against Islamic State militants in neighbouring Iraq. Mr Rouhani also found himself surrounded by angry coal miners who beat and threw rocks at his armored SUV during a visit to a northern mine struck by an explosion earlier this month that killed at least 42 people.
But authorities worry about tempers rising too high, especially after the 2009 disputed re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that saw unrest, mass arrests and killings. Authorities barred Mr Ahmadinejad from running in yesterday’s election, and Ayatollah Khamenei days ago warned anyone fomenting unrest “will definitely be slapped in the face”.
Polls closed at 8.30pm, Thailand time, and authorities believe the turnout exceeded 70%.