Barely concealing his fears of a very low turnout, Khamenei said: "In the eyes of people, analysts and policymakers all over the world, a regime that can attract more people to the ballot boxes is a stable regime. This is a sign of a regime's stability and durability."
Setting the stage for churning out inflated vote counts, Khamenei predicted that "people will participate in this election with enthusiasm and zeal... to show their support for Islam and the Islamic regime."
Three years ago, in the run-up to the sham presidential elections, Khamenei had told the Interior Ministry to increase the ballot papers from 20 to 30 million, saying that the regime was "in need of 30 million votes."
In a transparent attempt to facilitate rigging and inflate the final vote counts, the Guardians Council, the state body supervising the elections, announced on Tuesday that the use of computers for counting votes was not allowed and that votes must be counted mechanically.
According to reports from inside the Interior Ministry, polls taken by different government agencies or political factions within the regime show that voters will largely stay away from the polls on Friday and that only a small fraction of those eligible to vote will actually cast their votes.
In a message broadcast on the Resistance's nation-wide radio and television networks, Mr. Massoud Rajavi, President of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, described the mullahs' Majlis elections as a masquerade aimed at overshadowing the fact that this regime is usurping the Iranian people''s right to democratic rule. He said the Iranian people would boycott this election farce as they have done in previous cases. Whatever the result of the elections and no matter which faction gains the upper hand, the mullahs' three-headed regime will face a much-aggravated power struggle and internal crisis, which will speed up its overthrow.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
February 16, 2000
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