Another One Bites The Dust In Race For Iran Elections With Raisi As Front Runner
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Alaina
- . June 17, 2021
- . Update: June 17, 2021 9:10 pm
It is the same story of power that surpasses even religious supremacy that is ruling the roost in Iran too. The few contenders that existed to give competition to the most powerful candidate are withdrawing one by one. The recent one to go is the reformist hopeful and former Vice-President Mohsen Mehralizadeh who withdrew from the race by informing the Interior Ministry of his decision recently.
The one being pushed to reach the top, does not have great public approval. In fact, Ebrahim Raisi. Presidential candidate Ebrahim Raisi, also the current head of the judiciary has been known to give orders for mass execution of political prisoners in Iran.
Also comes to light the fact that he has been instrumental and stands accused of having been central to such a massacre that happened in 1988. He is also known to be a member of a so-called “Death Commission” in Evin and Gohardasht prisons.
Raisi is a frontrunner in forthcoming Iranian elections, something that the United Nations, the United States and European Union are vehemently against. The whole election is being ridiculed and being terms as a sham.
According to the British- Iranian Business Association and a political adviser, Babak Emamian “Raisi is the weakest in terms of the substance of the presidential candidates and is therefore favored by Iran’s ruling elite.”
Those who are favoring the ones in power are going to get to succeed various positions in the government. Raisi has been the yes man to the Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini in the 1980s. At the age of 21, Raisi worked as an executioner with a background of minimal education. He has also been instrumental to work as a ‘fixer’ for Khomeini then. Raisi also became the favorite for the presidency after former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was disqualified from running virtually unopposed.
This was in part because Iran’s Guardian Council disallowed a number of serious challengers. Ahmadinejad, who was president from 2005-2013, was the first Iranian president to ascend to the office outside the clerical ranks, trading on his popularity as mayor of Tehran and on his closeness with the ruling clerics.
