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– Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf cast his vote in the 13th presidential and sixth city and village councils elections on Friday morning.
The Speaker described election as “the most important political and social capital of the country, giving the country a depth and sustainability in security and power”.
He pointed to the economic problems hitting the country and said that people should not avoid voting because of those problems, as voting is the only way to solve them.
Iran’s presidential election is being held nationwide and in 133 countries.
Some 500 international journalists from 226 foreign media are covering the event in Iran.
59,310,307 Iranians are eligible to vote, from which 1.3 million are first-voters and 3.5 million are Iranians abroad, according to statistics from the Ministry of Interior.
Presidential candidates include Expediency Discernment Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei Mirqaed, Judiciary Chief Ebrahim Raisi, MP Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh and former Central Bank Governor Abdolnaser Hemmati. Saeed Jalili, Mohsen Mehralizadeh and Alireza Zakani, three other presidential candidates, dropped out of the presidential race.
The 13th presidential election is held simultaneous with the sixth round of city and village councils elections, the first mid-term for 11th parliament’s by-election, and the second mid-term for the fifth Assembly of Experts election.
Source: Islamic Republic News Agency – IRNA
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