The Iranians are called to the polls Friday, February 21 to designate their representatives to the Parliament, the Majlis. On Tuesday, the Guide to the Revolution, Ali Khamenei, the true head of the Islamic Republic, told them that their participation was a "Religious duty". But many are predicted to be free. Voting in the Islamic Republic is a compulsory exercise. The subtle mechanisms that govern the institutional labyrinth organizing the functioning of the regime allow the representation of various political tendencies, but only in a spectrum where one rigorously conforms to the principles of a system subject to the Guide's rule.
For the elections on Friday, which take place in a context of increased internal and external tensions, this already constrained game has tightened further around the most conservative, discouraging part of the electorate, those who could still believe, there are some still years, with the possibility of evolving the system from the inside towards a greater opening.
Since the end of 2019, the Guardian Council, the body responsible for validating candidates for legislative elections, has excluded several thousand aspiring parliamentarians, the majority of whom are reformists and moderates, associated with the current government of the president, Hassan Rohani, reelected by universal suffrage in 2017. Among the candidates considered are those of 90 outgoing representatives, mostly from these tendencies, opposed to the conservatives.
An era of stiffening
"Faced with the external threat, Guide Ali Khamenei has one imperative: to put order in the seraglio, explains Ahmad Salamatian, former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic and an expert on his balance of power. There is no longer any question for him of granting concessions to the population beyond his most definitely convinced supporters. The rest will not vote. " While Tehran had voted overwhelmingly in 2016 for the reformers by giving this political camp its 30 seats out of the 290 in the chamber, some studies predict this time a participation of less than 25%, which would benefit the conservatives. The latter can count on the social base of the regime which, by its vote, reaffirms its allegiance to the Islamic Republic.
In contrast, reformers and moderates historically depend on the hopes held in them by voters who love change. President Rohani, a man shaped by the regime, had been able to embody, in the context of the Iranian nuclear negotiations and thanks to their success, which ended in the signing of an agreement in 2015, hopes of openness and economic development. He had received strong support for this from the electorate in 2016, with the victory of his allies in the legislative elections.
