Maryam Rajavi: The Iranian people will boycott the “elections”

The candidates are responsible for four decades of the regime’s crimes

Elections in the clerical regime are a farce in which candidates must demonstrate heartfelt conviction and practical commitment to Velayat-e-Faqih (absolute clerical rule). The Guardian Council must approve candidates, and those who add no value to the charade or harbor the slightest disagreement with the mullahs’ Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei will be disqualified.
The Guardian Council is a 12-member body, half of whom are appointed by Khamenei directly while the other half are selected by the Judiciary Chief, who is himself a Khamenei appointee.
Candidates for next month’s sham presidential elections have participated in four decades of terrorism, crimes against humanity, genocide, war crimes, and plunder, and have no significant differences in terms of promoting repression, terrorism, warmongering, and pursuit of the nuclear weapons program. There is no difference between Ebrahim Raisi, the perpetrator of the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in 1988, and Ali Larijani, the terrorist and architect of censorship and suppression, or any of the other candidates.
This election is fundamentally different from previous elections, however. Following a series of nationwide uprisings and hundreds of local and regional protests in the past four years, in addition to the collapse of the country’s economy and the regime’s escalating internal feuds, the ruling mullahs are now facing the nightmare of being overthrown like never before.
To escape overthrow, Khamenei wants to install his preferred candidate, Raisi – the current Judiciary Chief – as the next president in a bid to consolidate the regime’s power. Even if he succeeds, the regime will become more fragile. If he fails, he will suffer a twofold defeat. In any case, the rift at the top of the regime is inevitable. This is the impasse that the faltering regime is facing. Regardless of who will be the next president, the regime’s overthrow will be expedited.
The Iranian people’s rallying cry is to boycott the mullahs’ sham election. During the 2017 and 2019 uprisings, with the chants of “Reformists, Hardliners, the game is now over,” the people demonstrated their unflinching resolve to overthrow the regime in its entirety. The regime’s gimmicks to heat up this masquerade will fail. The prospect of an uprising, the regime’s overthrow and the incurable crises have aggravated the regime’s internal power struggle. The Iranian people demand that the international community stand with them, reject the ruling religious tyranny, and instead support a democratically elected republic.