TEHRAN – The six rival presidential contenders, namely Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh-Hashemi, Mohsen Mehr-Alizadeh, Alireza Zakani, Naser Hemmati, Saeed Jalili and Mohsen Rezaei, met on Wednesday morning with President-elect Ebrahim Raisi.

The visit took place upon and an invitation by Raisi. The president-elect called the meeting “very good”.

At the meeting, Raisi said now that the election competition is over and the era of “friendship, cooperation and empathy” has begun all groups should join hands toward resolving the problems.

“We had a very good meeting with the presidential candidates, and we hope that such empathetic attitudes will lead to resolving the problems and undoing the knots in people’s lives,” Raisi said, according to Press TV.

Raisi said his former rivals expressed their views and proposals on the priorities that they assumed his administration should follow up on during the one month left until his swearing-in ceremony.

The presiding board of the parliament has announced that the swearing-in ceremony will take place on August 5.

In the final days leading to the June 18 presidential election, Jalili and Zakani dropped out of the race in favor of Raisi. Mehr-Alizadeh also withdrew candidacy without openly backing Hemmati whose views were close to each other.

Raisi defeated the remaining three candidates, securing a landslide victory. He won over 62 percent of the votes.

Raeisi said different solutions were explored for resolving the country’s problems, some of which had already been raised in the election debates.

"All the friends are concerned about the country, the Revolution, resolving problems, and undoing the knots in people’s lives, which is very important,” he pointed out.

Writing on his Twitter account after the meeting, Hemmati, an economist who headed the central bank for about two years, said he suggested short-term plans to provide foreign currency for basic commodities, controlling liquidity, and finding ways for budget deficit in the current Iranian year (March 2021-March 2022).

Hemmati also said in the meeting there was no talk of insults and it was an opportunity for him to again express his views based on economic science.

PA/PA