Iran returns to the polls. The country of the failed green revolution of 2009, which despite everything remains one of the most democratic states in the Near East, votes today for the renewal of the Parliament and the Assembly of experts: respectively 290 deputies and 88 members who will be nominated by 55 million voters. Half of them are under 35, one in four of them is unemployed (twice the national average).
The Iranian vote, pending the even more important one foreseen for next year for the election of the new President, is considered by many to be crucial for the regional and global scenarios: from Syria, to the nuclear agreement, to Afghanistan and to Turkish-Russian relations. Above all, it is first time Iranians have spoken since the nuclear deal and the end of many of the economic sanctions imposed on Tehran by the United States and Europe.
The vote essentially sees opposites moderates and conservatives: if we exclude the moderately reformist government of Hassan Rouhani, the other elected (and non-elected) offices are still in the hands of the conservative wing headed by the Supreme Guide, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The consultation is therefore presented as a sort of referendum to clear customs or not the policy of openness to the world desired by President Rouhani.
But on the eve of such important elections yesterday, surprisingly, the head of the electoral commission Mohammad Hussein Moghini announced that about 1400 candidates - out of the 6233 admitted by the Guardian Council - have given up standing in recent days. Moghini limited himself to saying that 4844 aspiring deputies will be in the running for the vote, without giving any explanations for such a high number of defections. However, what seems to worry the authorities the most, in these hours, is theabstentionism.
A survey conducted on a sample of 36 people by the super-official Irib, the broadcaster of the Islamic Republic of Iran, reports that 40% of the approximately 55 million voters may not go to the polls. An extremely high percentage, even higher, if confirmed, than the 37% of 2012. In that year, however, the reformists had called on the population to boycott the elections, in protest against the alleged fraud which in 2009 had led to the reconfirmation of the ultra-conservative Ahmadinejad, causing riots in the squares, the so-called green revolution, according to many concocted by the West and suffocated in blood.
Today the climate in Iran is a little different but the road to a complete democracy still seems long: many of those who will not vote underline, among other things, the irrelevant role of a Parliament with such limited powers. In fact, deputies can approve laws, but it is the Council of Guardians who decides whether they are constitutional or not, made up of 12 members, 6 religious appointed directly by the Supreme Guide (Khamenei) and six Islamic jurists appointed by the head of the judiciary in Iran (a in turn appointed by the Supreme Guide). The Guardian Council also selects, in turn, the parliamentary candidates themselves.
