The NCR President described the affirmative response to the Resistance's call for the election boycott as reflecting support for the Resistance and its President-elect, Mrs. Rajavi, by the overwhelming majority of the Iranian people. People stayed away although in recent weeks the regime attempted to lure them to the polling stations through an assortment of threats and enticements, he added.
Reports by hundreds of Iranian Resistance's observers from thousands of polling stations in Tehran and other cities indicate that most were deserted and in many of them until 8:00 PM, local time, shortly before the polls closed, less than 30 people had cast their votes.
The Resistance's sources in the Interior Ministry report that the regime's officials were furious over the extensive boycott and predicted that at most 3.5 million, or less than 10% of the eligible voters, had participated in the voting. To increase the number of eligible voters, they had reduced the voting age to 15. This means that some 37 million Iranians were eligible to vote.
Mr. Rajavi stressed that today's litmus test once again proved that in no way does this regime represent the Iranian people and that there are no excuses to continue placating policies such as critical dialogue which sacrifices human rights before petty economic interests. Today, many countries have stated their outrage and the Iranian people their abhorrence at this policy which only emboldens Tehran's sinister rulers to continue and step up human rights abuses, and to export terrorism and fundamentalism, he noted.
The NCR President added: To keep tight control over the situation, since several months ago, the mullahs' faltering regime adopted new suppressive laws and eliminated its collaborators and partners from the election and intensified its terrorist activities abroad.
In the last two weeks, the mullahs' terrorists assassinated Mrs. Zahra Rajabi, a member of the National Council of Resistance and her colleague in Istanbul, two Iranian Sunni clergymen and, last night, a Mojahedin member in Baghdad. Simultaneously, the regime heightened its interference in, and sabotage of, the Middle East peace process and unequivocally stated its support for terrorist currents and activities in the region.
Mr. Rajavi said: The time has come for the international community to adopt a decisive policy, including a trade embargo, against the religious, terrorist dictatorship, isolate it from the world community and hand over Iran's seats in international forums to the National Council of Resistance which represents the majority of the Iranian people.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran - Paris March 8, 1996
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