March 15, 2019
Former President Mohammad Khatami has for the first time questioned whether it is worth the effort for Iranian citizens to vote.
Iran’s 2017 presidential election had a 70 percent voter turnout, in large part due to Khatami’s call to vote for Hassan Rohani. However, in a recent meeting with the Reformist faction in the Majlis, Khatami’s enthusiasm for the ballot box seems to have waned; he questioned calling on Iranians to vote in the Majlis elections scheduled for 11 months hence.
“Today, I encounter this question from the people: You encouraged us to go to the ballot box. Show me one instance that produced true reforms?” Khatami said to his audience. “Has the Judiciary and the way they confront the people improved? Can we have a presence in a healthy private sector? Has the behavior that has put us in a confrontation with the world changed?”
Khatami continued, “It is now very hard to tell people to vote. Do you think that in the next election people will go to the ballot box based on our words? It is unlikely, unless there are transformations within the next year.”
He said, “Unfortunately, with the policies of some domestic currents, disappointment in our society is growing; the votes for Reformists will decline. But those votes will not go into the ballot box of the rivals of the Reformists, they will go into the box of those supporting regime change.”
Journalist Masumeh Naseri, who is outside Iran, tweeted, “Khatami too has finally lost hope.”
Al-Monitor reported that other Iranians expressed surprise that people had only approached him regarding the Judiciary and not corruption among Khatami’s own Reformist friends. “Are people’s questions of Khatami really about why the Judiciary has not become better,” tweeted writer Bahman Daroshafaei like some others. “People don’t ask him why the parliament’s and the administration’s performances are such as they are, [or] why Reformists are not that different than their rivals when it comes to corruption and other questions like this.”
Khatami assessed that Iran is in an “extremely difficult situation.” He said that as a result of the current crisis in Iran, “it will increase the mistrust of the people toward the government and society, and this mistrust will turn into hopelessness.” He said the current situation is the result of “some of the policies and directions, which should be reformed.”