Iran: Hassan Rouhani set for landslide in huge victory for reformists
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is
to claim re-election with a landslide victory, in a ringing endorsement of his
efforts to re-engage with the West and offer greater freedoms at home.
With a huge turnout,
polling stations stayed open until midnight in parts of the country, defying
worries that moderates disillusioned by the weak economy or slow pace of change
would not vote.
Preliminary results
from Iran’s interior ministry suggested Rouhani would return to power with a
bigger mandate than he had after his original 2013 win, driven by a boldly
reformist campaign.
Iran’s interior ministry
said Rouhani was ahead, with 22.8 million votes to his
conservative rival Ebrahim Raisi’s 15.5 million, with almost all votes
counted. The government said over 40 million people voted, out of 56 million
who were eligible. Officials plan to announce exact voter turnout later today. “Hope prevailed over
isolation,” former president and key Rouhani ally Mohammad Khatami posted on
Instagram, along with a photo of Rouhani making a victory sign, Reuters
reported. Iran’s state television congratulated Rouhani on re-election.
The foreign minister,
Mohammad Javad Zarif, said: “We derive stability not from ‘coalitions’, but
from our people, who – unlike many – do vote. Iranians must be respected and
are ready to engage.”
The incumbent saw off
a strong challenge from Raisi, a fellow cleric with radically different
politics, who stirred up populist concerns about the sluggish economy,
lambasted Rouhani for seeking foreign investment and appealed to religious
conservatives. He had gathered
momentum as conservatives keen to win back control of the government coalesced
behind Raisi’s initially lacklustre campaign.
In Iran’s unique and
uneasy hybrid of democracy and theocracy, the president has significant power
to shape government, although he is is ultimately constrained by the supreme
leader. Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, a hardliner thought to favour Raisi in the election and as a possible
successor for his own job, generally steers clear of day to day politics but
exerts ultimate control over Iran through control of
powerful bodies from the judiciary to the revolutionary guards corp. Despite losing the
overall race, Raisi appeared to have won enough votes to preserve his political
future, allowing him to campaign for office again or justify his promotion in
unelected bodies. Rouhani, who had
received 18.6m votes in 2013, is projected to receive well above 20m this time. Former reformist
president, Khatami, one of Iran’s most popular and influential politicians,
received 20m (69.6%) in 1997…
