The poll was conducted upon a request by the Interior Ministry which received the 60-page report. On the basis of this poll, 42% of those questioned, stressed that they will not take part in the elections and 51.6% said they did not know whether they will take part in the elections or not.
Among those who said they will not vote, 9.3% said the reason is that they do not know who the candidates are, 6.3% said the election was a sham, 7% said they were dissatisfied with the officials, 3.7% cited lack of publicity, 3.7% said that the candidates were incompetent, 3% cited the absence of candidates from other factions, 4.4% pointed to the poor state of their finances, 2.3% cited personal reasons, 0.6% spoke of the lack of security and 0.2% said the propaganda by the enemy was the cause for their non-participation.
The Guidance Ministry's internal report indicates that those who refused to give an answer were, generally speaking, not taking part in the elections but did not give an explicit response in fear of reprisals.
This poll, considered very confidential by the ministries of the Interior and Guidance, demonstrates palpably that the Islamic Councils' election sham will be met with an overwhelming and decisive boycott of the near unanimous majority of the Iranian people.
In previous statements and radio-television messages to the Iranian people, Mr. Massoud Rajavi, President of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, described boycotting the "Islamic Councils'" election farce as a patriotic duty in the confrontation with the mullahs' religious, terrorist dictatorship which is in no way congruent with a system based on councils.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
February 22, 1999
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