COME elections, Iran’s regime lets its people breathe more easily. In its attempt to whip up a high turnout of voters and prove that it has popular support, the regime ensures that presidential campaigns have a festive flavour. Over the past month the two front-running clerics have hosted DJs and footballers as warm-up acts at their rallies. The usual taboos against criticising the deep state that surrounds the unelected supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are flouted with abandon. Women, temporarily freed from their fear of harassment by the regime, let their mandatory veils slip so far back they look like neck-scarves. By night the capital, Tehran, has the atmosphere of a street carnival.
Large crowds at campaign rallies and long queues at polling stations, which opened on May 19th, suggest that many of Iran’s 56m voters will cast their ballots. Hassan Rouhani, the incumbent, has roused many of Iran’s disaffected people with his denunciations of the state...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/2pUosIX
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