Was Massoud Bezhakian's Presidency Result of 'Election Engineering'?

The early presidential election ultimately concluded with the victory of Massoud Bezhakian; an election where the public participation rate in the first round fell to an unprecedented figure of below 40 percent, and in the second round, with about a 10 percent increase in participation, Bezhakian managed to surpass Saeed Jalili by securing approximately 53 percent of the votes to reach the presidential office. Now that the election is over, reviewing the details of the internal conflicts within the 'Revolution Front' and debates with the opposing front, along with studying a few thoughtful analyses from various angles, makes the statements made two weeks before the election by the political deputy of the IRGC more meaningful. On June 15, General Yadollah Javani stated in Qom: 'Although some sectors of society are under economic pressure, in confronting the system, the Islamic Republic has managed to achieve a discursive victory; the destruction of Israel is a prerequisite for creating a pure Islamic civilization... and know that conditions are changing and history is being written in favor of the monotheistic front; the outcome of the election can either bolster the resistance front or create problems for it; the last three elections were not befitting for the country... An ideal election has two important aspects: participation and the selection of the most suitable individual; we need to create an electoral epic from this farewell epic [the funeral of Raisi]... One of the arenas for counting the followers of the leadership is the election scene; [as Khamenei said,] if the Iranian nation wants to preserve national interests and maintain its strategic depth in the region, it needs an active, hardworking president who believes in Islamic principles. There have been groups and parties that, when in power, did not accelerate the revolutionary movement as needed and sometimes sought to change the course. Now, it can be said with more confidence that the approval of Massoud Bezhakian's candidacy, alongside the disqualification of Ishaq Jahangiri and Abbas Akhoundi, who were prominent figures of the reformists, was aimed at increasing participation to help solve the relative problem of 'the important aspect of participation'; however, it is hard to say they had predicted that Bezhakian would succeed in pushing back the 'most suitable individual'; as now, a few days after the election, some conservative figures are also voicing concerns about the results of 'the Guardian Council's engineering in candidate arrangements': the result of a closed political space; four points about Massoud Bezhakian. Among the factors influencing Bezhakian's success, the following can be listed: attracting some votes from segments of the population that pay no attention to whether candidates are conservative or reformist and are just seeking to improve their living conditions, like those who voted for Ahmadinejad in 2005 because he portrayed himself as 'the people's man' and those who voted for Ebrahim Raisi in 2021 because they perceived him as 'the master of the deprived' under the influence of government propaganda; Bezhakian's political appearance, which has no reputation or signs of corruption, appears simple-living, dresses like the lower class, speaks their language, and overall seems to them like a chocolate package worth opening or even being liked; the organizational capacity of the reformists in advertising linked to the strategic error of the 'Revolution Front' and especially the internal conflicts within this front, which have deepened more than ever and have come to light, and they are still issuing statements blaming each other. In this context, analyses such as 'the impact of ethnic votes', which are seen in some analyses of the opposition as well as in the analyses of the Stability Front figures, seem more like a game with numbers that, although unintentionally, benefits the government; meaning the reduction of 'the deep gap between the nation and the government', which is the main challenge of the country, and placing this issue under the shadow of the gap 'between reformists and the people' on one side and 'the opposition and the government' on the other side. In short, within the framework of the scenario of 'the importance of participation alongside the importance of electing the most suitable individual' and the complementary and inevitable scenario of 'non-interference in the advertising, counting, and announcing of votes', it ultimately seems that Khamenei and the IRGC have accepted the presidency of 'the acceptable righteous' instead of 'the unacceptable righteous'. The political behavior of the people. According to social and political events of the past two or three decades, most Iranians have long been opposed to the current situation and are seeking change, reform, or the overthrow of the government, sometimes in the form of civil opposition like the protests of November 2019 and the 'Women, Life, Freedom' movement, and sometimes, for example, in the form of civil resistance by electing Mohammad Khatami or this time with a combination of widespread boycotting and 'negative voting' against Saeed Jalili. At the same time, the experience of the past twenty years has shown that dissatisfied voters have not guaranteed their votes for any party or movement and will not do so. Even if the reformists were successful in promoting Bezhakian and intensifying the bipolar atmosphere, they have yet to provide any evidence that the people's votes for Bezhakian signify support for the reformists as a political spectrum or front. 'Reformist, conservative, the story is over' if in 2017 it was just a street slogan, since November 2019, it has become a prevailing social-political reality in society. The political influence of the people from reference groups, especially intellectuals and elites, is also highly questionable. As sociologists say, Iranian society has been experiencing a political reference vacuum at least since 2005, and it is an analytical error if the ability to influence a limited range of friends is mistaken for the influential power of reference groups over segments of the population. How can we understand the 60 percent who said 'no' to the elections? From the population 'supporting the system' to the opposition. However, this election can also be viewed as a kind of referendum for a government that is aware of the result of a free referendum and is avoiding it, relying solely on the street presence of its supporters at funerals. According to the official statistics of the government, the result of over two decades of propaganda and spending to expand the population supporting the status quo as the 'essence of support', which Khamenei has wished for since the early 2010s, has ultimately barely reached 15 percent of the country's population who voted for Saeed Jalili in the first round. Even if we consider the second round, this number - according to the government's own official statistics - reaches 22 percent of the country's population. In other words, at best, out of the 87 million Iranians, only 22 percent support the government and the continuation of the status quo, while 78 percent of the country's population seeks to overthrow, change, or reform the current situation. Ali Khamenei once said about some Western countries, 'It is a disgrace for a nation to have a participation rate of 35 or 40 percent in its presidential elections; it is clear that the people have neither trust nor hope in the political system.' Leaving aside the 'disgrace' of participation below 40 percent in the first round and below 50 percent in the second round - so disgraceful that even Khamenei, to avoid acknowledging it in his official message, used the strange expression 'the accumulation of 55 million votes in two rounds', even this unofficial referendum is very unlikely to have any impact on the governance of the IRGC and Khamenei's perspective. According to Khamenei and the IRGC, it is true that 'the country is facing economic problems', but the 'resistance front' and 'new Islamic civilization' are at stake. In Khamenei and the IRGC's view, not only do the majority who voted negatively for the candidate of the resistance front and Islamic civilization 'not oppose the system', but even the broader majority who boycotted the elections 'are not against the system; they either had work and troubles or did not have the time or patience.' Saeed Jalili; 'the thread of the bead' or the shell of the 'hard core' of the government? However, what is certain is that the declining participation in the last three elections - which, according to the political deputy of the IRGC, was not befitting for the system - led the government to abandon holding completely non-competitive elections and turn to limited and controlled competitive elections, but despite the change of scenario and all efforts, it still failed to attract the majority of the population's participation in the elections to renew the government's legitimacy or, as Khamenei put it, 'the survival of the system' (with more than 60 percent of the people not participating in the first round and more than 50 percent in the second round). Therefore, it is not unlikely that the government and the IRGC will consider other scenarios in the next elections to address the problem of low participation, which has unprecedentedly tarnished and wounded the legitimacy of the government. The hope of voters for Bezhakian lies in minor openings that they consider the result of their civil resistance, and the fear of boycotters is that the result of their civil resistance to challenge the legitimacy of the government will once again remain futile due to what critics describe as 'the inaction, lack of planning, fragmentation, and weakness of the opposition abroad in organizing and confining their political activities to reaction rather than action'; meaning what causes 'the overthrow of a regime to still be pursued in a fanciful space.'