President Rouhani Says Iranian Nation Winner of Polls
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who has secured a second term, praised the people’s massive presence in the 12th presidential election held on Friday and said they are the true winner of the polls.
“You, the great Iranian nation, are the winner of the election,” Rouhani said on his Twitter account in his first comment after winning the vote on Saturday.
“I humbly bow before you,” he said in his tweet, adding that he will remain faithful to his promises given to the Iranian nation.
Rouhani won Friday’s presidential election by securing an absolute majority of the votes.
With the votes from 99.7% of ballot boxes in the nationwide presidential election counted, Rouhani emerged victorious and secured a second term by winning 57 percent of the votes, Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli announced at a press conference on Saturday.
Rouhani garnered 23,549,616 votes from a total of 41,220,131 ballots that were cast in the presidential election on Friday, he added.
The runner-up, Ebrahim Raisi, secured 38.5% of the votes with 15,786,449 ballots, Rahmani Fazli noted, saying the two other candidates, Mostafa Aqa-Mirsalim and Mostafa Hashemitaba, won 478,215 and 219,450 votes, respectively.
More than 56,400,000 Iranian people were eligible to vote. Participation of above 41 million voters translates into a turnout of 73 percent.
Iranian expatriates in 103 countries cast their ballots simultaneous with the big turnout at home.
During the previous presidential election in June 2013, Rouhani had emerged victorious by winning 50.7 percent of a total of over 36 million votes. He had won more than three times as many votes as his closest challenger.