Montajebnia: They Want to Bring One Million People to Tehran to Vote

Resul Montajebnia, the deputy of the National Trust Party of Iran, says that conservatives have held "secret meetings" to bring "one million people to Tehran" in order to increase votes for their candidates in the Tehran electoral district. On Tuesday, March 4, he told ILNA that "a few months ago we learned that hardliners decided in secret meetings to bring a population of over one million from the villages to Tehran and allocated a budget for this so that they would vote in Tehran and increase their votes." He added, "Therefore, the Ministry of Interior should think about this issue, as some institutions are using public funds to bring people to Tehran to vote." The National Trust Party, of which Resul Montajebnia is the deputy, was founded in 2005 by Mehdi Karroubi, and several members of this party were arrested during the protests in 2009. In the continuation of his interview with ILNA, the deputy of the National Trust Party also mentioned that the rumor about the closure on Saturday is a "political game" by conservatives. He stated that "conservatives and hardliners are trying to pressure the government to close schools on Saturday so that people go on trips and are not in Tehran, preventing the reformist list from receiving votes and allowing them to win the elections with minimal participation." This reformist political activist warned, "Hardliners know that if people do not come to the polls, they will lose, so they want public participation to be low. For this reason, I warn government members and the public that we have been harmed by these holidays and remind them that frequent closures were one of the betrayals of the previous government. This is a dangerous conspiracy; the government should not be influenced by these pressures." The 10th round of the Islamic Consultative Assembly elections will be held simultaneously with the 5th round of the Assembly of Experts elections on Friday, March 7. The widespread disqualifications in this election round have particularly affected many reformist candidates.