Parliamentary elections to renew the 290 seats in the Majlis, and those to elect the 88 members of the Assembly of Experts, were held in Iran on March 1, registering a 41 percent turnout, according to IRNA (the official government news agency).
This did not result in the vote meltdown feared by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, although the result is somewhat lower than past percentages and confirms a general disaffection of Iranians from politics. In the 2016 parliamentary elections, the first after the signing of the JCPOA and at the height of the enthusiasm generated by the prospects of reviving the economy as a result of the openings favored by former President Rohani, the turnout was about 62 percent, then plummeting to 42.5 percent in 2020, by which time the agreement had long since stalled and conservative forces ready to regain control of Iranian politics.
The 2024 turnout results thus stay in line with the trend recorded in the last elections, and also confirm the trend that also characterized the presidential elections, which in 2017 recorded 73.33 percent and then in 2021 48.48 percent.
The issue of voter turnout is a matter of great importance to the leadership of the Islamic Republic, which considers it as the main tool of legitimacy both domestically and internationally, where Iranian elections have always been characterized by multiple accusations, especially in the merit of candidate selection. In order to increase the number of voters, therefore, it has been a long-standing practice to announce the extension of the opening of polling stations by a few hours beyond the limit set for closure, officially justifying the move as necessary to manage the long queues that form in front of polling stations while in reality the extension of the closure is functional to the need to increase as much as possible a now low average number of voters.
The 2024 elections also represent an important appointment for the top leadership for at least two reasons. The first is that related to the fact that it is the first round of elections after last year’s massive wave of protests-after the killing of young Mahsa Amini by the so-called “moral police”-and thus burdened by the risk of a heightened abstention from voting especially by the younger generation. The protest has been dormant, partly as a result of the repression and partly because it is unstructured in the form of a real movement and therefore lacks real leadership, but the deep-seated reasons for the social malaise are ever-present and widely shared by the population, leading the Islamic Republic’s leadership to fear a colossal collapse in turnout for this year. A collapse that has not actually occurred, although confirming a markedly downward trend compared to the country’s historical averages, which have registered nearly double the percentages during the political phases of Khatami’s reformism and Rohani’s pragmatism over the past decade.
The second reason, on the other hand, is the concurrent election of the Assembly of Experts, which serves an eight-year term and is likely to be the body called upon in the future to make the difficult choice of the next Supreme Leader. Ayatollah Khamenei is now 84 years old, according to many he is not in good health, and the term of the next Assembly is therefore widely believed to be the one that will have to deal with his succession, with all the unknowns involved. There do not seem at present to be any possible candidates for this task, and many believe that with Khamenei’s death a phase of profound institutional transformation could open, in fact opening up the substantial end of the theocracy. This factor, moreover, must also be placed in relation to the generational change that has now taken place in the country at the top of the political and administrative system. The first generation of power, the one that emerged from the revolutionary process and of mostly clerical expression, is now numerically very small and has long since given way to a second generation, which is not, however, an expression of the clergy like the first but rather of the vast military and industrial apparatus of the pervasive Sepah-e Pasdaran, or IRGC, system. Since these now represent the central backbone of the political and administrative system of power, many wonder what interest they might have in preserving a system dominated at the top by a clergy figure, of whom they are not an expression, thus opening up the possibility of a reform process that, while formally safeguarding the religious aspect of the institutions, would favor a shift of power to the presidency.
Few, on the other hand, are the expectations in terms of results, a very clear prevalence of deputies from the conservative area being taken for granted in this legislature as well. Approximately 50,000 individuals applied to stand for election, but the Guardian Council-the institutional body that, among other things, authorizes candidacies under somewhat arbitrary rules-ultimately authorized only 15,200 of them, moreover, communicating their names a few weeks before the elections and preventing them from being able to campaign properly. Of these, only 30 can be traced back to acronyms or positions of the reformist area, but the selection process also led to the disqualification of numerous conservatives from the traditionalist and centrist areas, again largely favoring those expressing the most radical bangs.
Former President Rohani himself was not allowed to run for the Assembly of Experts, demonstrating once again how the real arena of politics is now essentially confined to the sphere of conservatives alone, who are nonetheless internally divided into very different currents, and increasingly affected by extremely conflicting positions.
Later this week there will be official confirmation of voter turnout and the names of the new deputies and 88 members of the Assembly of Experts may be known, opening a new legislature whose dynamics, however, seem to be of less and less interest to Iranian society.
