Participation was three to four times less than the first round, forcing the regime to acknowledge the low turnout
NCRI – The Iranian people boycotted the run-off for Majlis (Parliament) election sham even more extensively than the first round.
Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the Iranian Resistance, described the farce as a greater fiasco and disgrace for the clerical regime, compelling it to acknowledge the sparse turnout.
According to reports by the social headquarters of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) from polling stations in Tehran and other provinces across the country, the number of voters in yesterday's run-off was three to four times less than the first round. The reports indicated that those who cast their ballots were mainly members of the Revolutionary Guard Corps and the suppressive forces.
In the first round of the election sham last month, 95 percent of those eligible to vote boycotted the election, according to the social headquarters of the PMOI which monitored 25,000 polling stations.
The official figure of 700,000 votes in Tehran is exaggerated several-fold. Nevertheless, this was only 10 percent of those eligible to vote, or three times less than the number of those whom officials said had voted in the first round.
The situation was the same in other parts of the country. Commenting on the turnout yesterday, former President and the current State Exigency Council chief Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, said, "In the early years after the Revolution we could see far greater number of people going to ballot boxes, but this has dropped in recent years."
Mrs. Rajavi added that the election result was a turning point as it demonstrated the scope of the boycott and the extent of internal purge within the regime. The new balance of power within the regime is unprecedented and will further weaken the regime and render it more vulnerable. This means that more purges and desertions loom, she reiterated.
Since the first round of elections, the Interior and the Economy and Finance ministers as well as a number of provincial governors and deputy ministers were sacked.
Asked about his own future, a demoralized Mohammad Khatami commented, "I have retired [from politics]."
The President-elect of the Iranian Resistance described the regime's new Majlis as an assembly of murderers, torturers and henchmen who are mostly from Khamenei-Ahmadinejad's faction.
Out of 30 candidates who found their way to mullahs' Majlis from Tehran, the very last one on the list, Alireza Mahjoub, is affiliated to Rafsanjani's faction. He is a veteran member of the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). In his capacity of the head of the House of Labor, he had played a major role in the crackdown on dissidents, especially workers.
Mrs. Rajavi added that Khamenei and Ahmadinejad intend to use the new Majlis to remove all obstacles in the path of an irreversible drive towards nuclear weapons, export of terrorism and domestic crackdown.
She said that from day one the electoral process was a travesty under a system based on principle of the velayat-e faqih (supremacy of clerical leadership). Nevertheless, she added, the Iranian people's decisive boycott of this farce and the unprecedented purge of rival factions within the mullahs' Majlis maintaining ties and engaging in trade with this illegitimate and medieval regime could no longer be justified.
Mrs. Rajavi stressed that continuing to appease and engage in trade with the mullahs was tantamount to assisting the regime in its suppression of the Iranian people, its bid to export fundamentalism and terrorism to the Middle East region and the rest of the world, and to acquire the nuclear bomb. Any delay in adopting a decisive policy against the regime would have catastrophic consequences not just for the Iranian people but also for the whole region and the world, she emphasized.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
April 26, 2008
