The
incumbent Hassan Rouhani has been selected, not elected, to a second-term as
the mullahs’ president in Iran. At 12:30 pm local time reports from inside Iran
announced the near final results, claiming nearly 40 million casted their
ballots, with around 23 million voting for Rouhani and 15.5 million for his
main challenger Ebrahim Raisi, a senior cleric known for his close relations
with the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and believed by many to be his preferred
candidate for the role.
With
Rouhani set to start a second term, his promises of improving the economy and
the human rights situation, will be placed to test. His first tenure, however,
was riddled with many un-kept pledges, following a history of Iranian
presidents failing to deliver on highly boasted promises.
Rouhani’s
first four years were engulfed with nothing but mounting executions – over
3,000 to be exact – and an intense crackdown campaign, rampaging poverty and
injustice in the domestic stage; and intensifying foreign meddling and
skyrocketing military/security budgets alongside efforts to advance the
regime’s ballistic missile drive.
Rouhani
in his second term will most likely continue the same policies and attempts of
deceptive measures aimed at obtaining further concessions from the West. Of
course, considering the recent change of guards in Washington, the mullahs’
regime should not anticipate any of the success they secured during the Obama
years.
The most
important impact of another four years of Rouhani as president is the beginning
of a highly intensified power struggle and intense dispersion amongst the
regime’s ranks and files. Such a phenomenon has the potential of launching a
major outburst from Iran’s powder keg society as the people will realize the
potential of growing rifts amongst the regime’s senior hierarchy. This upsurge
in energy will be targeting the regime in its entirety and leading to its end.
This
election, with this outcome, has been an utter failure for the regime apparatus
as a whole, and an even more significant defeat for Khamenei himself. The Iran
populace showing a general neglect of this election façade and the nationwide
boycott is a clear indication of their desire for regime change and an end to
the mullahs’ theocracy.
On Friday
the regime resorted to a known tactic of flocking its dwindling social base to
a certain number of polling stations in Tehran and other major cities, and
herding foreign journalists through a preplanned tour of only a handful of such
sites to prove its claim of a high voter turnout.
Comments
Post a Comment