Ebrahim Raisi has won the country’s presidential election by a landslide, according to preliminary results released on Saturday by the Interior Ministry.
Raisi won more than 17.8 million votes out of 28.6 million ballots counted, far ahead of the second-placed candidate Mohsen Rezai, who won 3.3 million votes, election office chairman Jamal Orf said on state television after Friday’s vote
Meanwhile, former Governor of the Central Bank of Iran Nasser Hemmati garnered 2.4 million votes, and conservative MP Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh-Hashemi won almost one million votes, the Ministry figures revealed.
Raisi, who has been the Chief Justice since 2019, has formerly held several other posts in the country judicial branch following the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
He was campaigning with the slogan “Popular Administration, Strong Iran” aimed at uprooting corruption in the executive branch, fighting poverty, creating jobs and containing inflation.
Orf added that vote counting was still ongoing an official announcement will be made later.
Congratulations poured in for Raisi on Saturday for winning presidential elections even before official results were announced.
Iran’s outgoing moderate President Hassan Rouhani said earlier his successor had been elected in the previous day’s vote.
“I congratulate the people on their choice,” said Rouhani. “My official congratulations will come later, but we know who got enough votes in this election and who is elected today by the people.”
And Rezai tweeted that he hoped Raisi could build “a strong and popular government to solve the country’s problems”.
The only reformist in the race, former central bank governor Abdolnasser Hemmati, also tweeted his congratulations to Raisi.
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