Controversial Iranian former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has declared his candidacy for office in the new elections. The 67-year-old politician reported to the Ministry of Interior in the capital Tehran on Sunday, Iranian media report.
During his term of office (2005-2013) he caused a stir with anti-Semitic statements. Recently, the ex-president was surprisingly critical of the government. According to observers, he has fallen out of favor with state authorities.
Ineligible for the 2021 elections
Ahmadinejad wanted to participate in the 2021 elections, but that was not allowed. The vote was believed to have been controlled to help unpopular arch-conservative cleric Ebrahim Raisi win. After his accidental death, Iran will elect a new president on June 28.
Candidates can nominate themselves for the election until Monday. According to the state broadcaster, about twenty candidates have registered so far.
The so-called Guardian Council, a powerful supervisory body made up of Muslim clerics and lawyers, then decides on the suitability of the applicants. This usually only allows citizens to choose from a group of candidates who are loyal to the system.
In Iran, unlike many other countries, the president is not the head of state, but rather the head of the government. Real power is concentrated in the hands of religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Protests after the death of a young Kurdish woman
Many people in Iran have become disillusioned in recent decades by political repression, an economic crisis and failed reform efforts, and have lost faith in major domestic political changes.
In the fall of 2022, nationwide protests against the Islamic rule system broke out following the death of the young Kurdish woman Jina Masa Amini. Voter turnout in this year’s parliamentary elections reached a record low of around 40 percent.
Source: Krone
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