Leader Hails ‘Epic’ Election

“This election was truly and fairly an epic and the analysts who had their eyes on Iran’s elections realized what a momentous event occurred,” he said on Sunday in a meeting with the judiciary chief and staff. 

He also called media efforts to downplay people’s “historic” move as futile. 

Presidential elections were held in Iran on June 18 along with city and village councils polls. The registered turnout was nearly 49% and Judiciary Chief Ebrahim Raeisi won with over 61% of the votes cast. 

The Leader said propaganda activity, especially by American, British and several other reactionary countries’ media, and using traitorous Iranian elements to discourage people from voting were unprecedented in this year’s election.  

They even resorted to excuses such as livelihood problems and approval of candidates’ qualifications to achieve their goal, he added. 

“Those foreigners were hopeful that due to these pretexts, the turnout would go down to 20% to 25%, but this wish did not come true,” he said. 

Powerful Punch

Ayatollah Khamenei also underlined the coronavirus pandemic which had an impact of around 10% on voter turnout based on expert calculations.  

“Despite all these issues, people stood in lines passionately since early hours and created a real and great epic, delivering a powerful punch to the chests of who opposed and boycotted the elections,” he said. 

The winner of this election, according to the Leader, is the Iranian nation while the losers are those who did their utmost to push people away from the polls. 

Pointing to false interpretations of the rather high number of invalid votes, Ayatollah Khamenei stressed that this figure does not indicate those voters’ separation from the Islamic Republic.

“On the contrary, a person who comes to the polls and does not see his/her favorite choice among the candidates, but writes the name of that person or casts a blank vote, has in fact shown his interest for the ballot box and the [country’s] governance,” he said.

The electoral debates were also exemplary, according to the Leader, as a variety of ideas were presented.

The Leader also hailed the authorities and other candidates’ behavior with the new president which depicted the calm and peace of the country’s political climate.   

Judiciary Honors 

Before the Leader’s speech, Raeisi presented a report of the judiciary’s activities over the past years around four topics, namely implementation of the reform document, combatting corruption, upholding public rights and making the judicial system more popular. 

Ayatollah Khamenei thanked Raeisi for his motivated efforts which have produced favorable results. 

Raising people’s hope and improving their trust in the judiciary is among the most important outcomes of Raeisi’s activities over the past two years, according to him. 

He expressed hope that the judicial body would carry on with the same approach in its new chapter and offer better services to the nation by even harder work.