Iranian opposition units inside Iran have called for the boycott of the regime’s presidential election. On April 16, 2021, the Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) released a statement in this regard.
“Between April 9 and 15, 2021, supporters of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK/PMOI) and Resistance Units called for a nationwide boycott of the regime’s sham Presidential election by posting banners and placards, writing graffiti, and distributing leaflets in public places.” reads the NCRI statement.
In their activities, the MEK Resistance Units underlined that the nationwide boycott of the election responds to those who gunned down over 1500 protesters during the nationwide Iran protests in November 2019.
During their nationwide protests in the last few days and weeks, retirees and pensioners of Iran’s Social Security Organization chanted slogans such as “We will not vote anymore; we have not seen any justice,” and “We will not vote anymore; we have heard enough lies.”
Also, plundered investors of Tehran’s Stock Exchange on Thursday called for the elections’ boycott, saying: “We will no longer vote; we have not seen any justice.”
Iranians are now grappling with extreme poverty and skyrocketing prices. Many Iranians are unable to make their ends meet. During their daily protests, people from all walks of life express their hatred toward the regime and blame the mullahs’ wrong policies and corruption as the fundamental problem of Iran’s economy.
Engulfed with domestic and international crises, the regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei intends to legitimize his regime by holding the sham presidential elections. “The more public participation in the elections, the more effects and benefits it will have for the state,” Khamenei said on February 17. “Whenever we approach elections, the enemy starts saying, ‘there is no freedom and the elections are engineered,’ to disperse the people from taking part in them,” he added.
Yet, the regime officials and state-run media underlining people’s desire to boycott the elections. “It has been long since the entire [regime] is facing the crisis of legitimacy,” wrote the state-run Ebtekar daily on April 10.
“Both political institutions and figures are experiencing the lowest level of public trust. People hardly fall for slogans and claims. They are no longer cheering up fantasy worlds. The utopia of the collective mind of Iranian society has reached its end, and people ignore hollow promises,” Ebtekar’s article adds.
In another admission, Sadeq Ziba Kalam, one of the members of the so-called “reformist” faction of the regime, recently said that the regime’s sham presidential elections would have a much smaller turnout of the parliamentary elections. Ziba Kalam had previously acknowledged that claims of “reformism” no longer works in Iran.
On March 23, in an interview with the semi-official ILNA news agency, Mahmoud Sadeghi, a former member of the regime’s Parliament, said, “Statistics on people’s turnout in elections are worrying; people’s most important question is, what is the use of participating in elections…last year’s election, we had the lowest turnout.”
Now, as the social and economic crises continue in Iran, more people are joining the campaign of boycotting the regime’s sham presidential elections. As Hassan Khomeini, grandson of the regime’s founder Ruhollah Khomeini recently said, the regime is “in a very critical situation because people live in harsh conditions.” He acknowledged that “the current situation will increase public dissent and cause social crises,” or, in other words, people’s uprising.
