By Александр Бердюгин @Adobe Stock
Benoit Faucon and oters in Iran get a choice of two very different candidates, but most of them have given up on the system that produced them. They write:
Iran’s presidential election runoff Friday presents a stark choice between an anti-Western hard-liner and a reformist. Most Iranian voters are expected to want neither—a sign of the widespread rejection of a system that has brought arduous moral restrictions, an economic slump and a crisis of legitimacy.
Reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian drew 43% of the vote in the first round against 39% for conservative Saeed Jalili, setting the stage for Friday’s runoff to succeed President Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in a helicopter crash in May. Around 60% of Iran’s voters stayed away in the first round, disillusioned that their choice would make a meaningful difference.
The winner will inherit a dire legacy. […]
Many voters are still likely to stay away.
Only 45% of eligible voters intend to cast their ballot with 49.5% favoring Pezeshkian, 43.9% for Jalili and the rest undecided on who to vote for, according to a poll by the government-connected Iranian Students Polling Agency released Thursday.
“This is a clear sign of the increased perceived illegitimacy or inefficacy of the Islamic Republic in the eyes of a majority of its citizens,” said Farzan Sabet, an Iran-focused senior research associate at the Geneva Graduate Institute, an international-affairs focused Swiss university. “We can expect a continuation of the cycle of mass demonstrations.”
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