The Islamic Iran Participation Front, a reformist party, says: “Boycotting the elections has become a principle for the people.”
The Norooz website reports that the Participation Front attributes the people’s disregard for the elections to “the coup d’etat of 2009.”
The opposition in Iran often refers to the presidential election of 2009, in which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was deemed the victor, as a coup.
They maintain that the ballot was rigged in order to prevent the election of MirHosein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, the reformist candidates. Mousavi and Karroubi challenged the results, and popular protests rocked the country. But the government responded with a violent crackdown on protesters and, finally, the house arrest of Mousavi and Karroubi, which has completely cut them off from the outside world and has so far silenced the protests.
However, the question of participating in the coming parliamentary elections now looms large in the Islamic Republic’s political arena.
Mohammad Khatami, a former president and another senior reformist figure, has said reformists should participate in the elections only if all political prisoners are released, the parties and media are allowed freedom of activity and elections are free and transparent.
The Islamic Iran Participation Front supports the conditions proposed by Khatami and urged the government to end “the politics of oppression, imprisonment and house arrests” and establish “an open political atmosphere.”
