Prince Reza Pahlavi Calls for Election Boycott: Do Not Participate in Government’s ‘Deception’
Prince Reza Pahlavi, son of Iran’s last shah, called for a boycott of Iran’s presidential election in a statement, writing that talk of elections under “conditions of suppressed demand and monopolized supply” constitutes “fraud.”
Prince Reza Pahlavi, on the eve of the twelfth presidential election of the Islamic Republic of Iran, called on the Iranian people not to participate in “another round of the historic election fraud” and in “the deception of the corrupt ruling faction.”
According to Mr. Pahlavi, “from merchants to clerics, the priority of the system’s disposable and recycled contractors has been and remains preserving the anti-national ruling faction in power,” and the Islamic Republic’s governance seeks to “empty elections of their content” in pursuit of “a media-friendly appearance to embellish its reactionary nature.”
The last crown prince of Iran, who heads the “National Council of Iran,” described the competition between principalists and reformists in the upcoming election as “a division of labor within the corrupt ruling faction,” and wrote: “The problem cannot be solved by those who have played the most crucial role in creating it.” Therefore, Iran’s youth must “turn their backs on this corrupt faction.”
In the 2016 human rights report released by the U.S. State Department, it stated that “Iranian citizens face restrictions in their ability to determine their government through peaceful means, free and fair elections.”
Hassan Rouhani, president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, responded to this report in the last month of the previous year, stating that elections in Iran are “free, sound, competitive and democratic,” and that 70 to 73 percent of Iranians participate in elections.
Sara Repoucci, a senior official at Freedom House, told Voice of America that elections held in Iran are not “free”: “We witness severe control being exercised in the candidate selection process. Even if we were to say that process was free, electoral campaigns are not conducted freely, and for this reason we still believe that democracy has not taken root in Iran, at least not in this year’s elections.”
The twelfth Iranian presidential election will be held on Friday, May 19.
Source: Voice of America
