President Hassan Rouhani said that on Tuesday night he wrote to the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to express his reservations about the candidates disqualified from this election. Rouhani outlined his anxieties in the speech, saying “What will happen to our national cohesion if, God forbid, the presence in the elections is low?” He added that “The soul of elections is competition; if you take this from the elections, the body will become lifeless. The principle of elections is that there should be intense competition to form real elections”.