Is no-one following this? Ahmadinejad wins "tight" election by 30 points, the streets of Tehran pour over with protestors:
quote:
Thousands of opposition supporters have clashed with police after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner of Iran's presidential poll.
Secret police have been attacked, while riot police used batons and tear gas against backers of Mir Hossein Mousavi, who called the results a "charade".
The official results gave Mr Ahmadinejad 63% of the vote and 34% for Mr Mousavi. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei praised the high turnout of 85%, described the count as a "real celebration" and called for calm.
Clear proof of electoral fraud is still forthcoming, but the early evidence is pretty damning:
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1. It is claimed that Ahmadinejad won the city of Tabriz with 57%. His main opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, is an Azeri from Azerbaijan province, of which Tabriz is the capital. Mousavi, according to such polls as exist in Iran and widespread anecdotal evidence, did better in cities and is popular in Azerbaijan. Certainly, his rallies there were very well attended. So for an Azeri urban center to go so heavily for Ahmadinejad just makes no sense. In past elections, Azeris voted disproportionately for even minor presidential candidates who hailed from that province.
2. Ahmadinejad is claimed to have taken Tehran by over 50%. Again, he is not popular in the cities, even, as he claims, in the poor neighborhoods, in part because his policies have produced high inflation and high unemployment. That he should have won Tehran is so unlikely as to raise real questions about these numbers.
3. It is claimed that cleric Mehdi Karoubi, the other reformist candidate, received 320,000 votes, and that he did poorly in Iran's western provinces, even losing in Luristan. He is a Lur and is popular in the west, including in Kurdistan. Karoubi received 17 percent of the vote in the first round of presidential elections in 2005. While it is possible that his support has substantially declined since then, it is hard to believe that he would get less than one percent of the vote. Moreover, he should have at least done well in the west, which he did not.
4. Mohsen Rezaie, who polled very badly and seems not to have been at all popular, is alleged to have received only 670,000 votes, twice as much as Karoubi.
5. Ahmadinejad's numbers were fairly standard across Iran's provinces. In past elections there have been substantial ethnic and provincial variations.
6. The Electoral Commission is supposed to wait three days before certifying the results of the election, at which point they are to inform Khamenei of the results, and he signs off on the process. The three-day delay is intended to allow charges of irregularities to be adjudicated. In this case, Khamenei immediately approved the alleged results.
I am aware of the difficulties of catching history on the run. Some explanation may emerge for Ahmadinejad's upset that does not involve fraud. For instance, it is possible that he has gotten the credit for spreading around a lot of oil money in the form of favors to his constituencies, but somehow managed to escape the blame for the resultant high inflation.
But just as a first reaction, this post-election situation looks to me like a crime scene. And here is how I would reconstruct the crime.
As the real numbers started coming into the Interior Ministry late on Friday, it became clear that Mousavi was winning. Mousavi's spokesman abroad, filmmaker Mohsen Makhbalbaf, alleges that the ministry even contacted Mousavi's camp and said it would begin preparing the population for this victory.
The ministry must have informed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has had a feud with Mousavi for over 30 years, who found this outcome unsupportable. And, apparently, he and other top leaders had been so confident of an Ahmadinejad win that they had made no contingency plans for what to do if he looked as though he would lose.
They therefore sent blanket instructions to the Electoral Commission to falsify the vote counts.
This clumsy cover-up then produced the incredible result of an Ahmadinejad landlside in Tabriz and Isfahan and Tehran.
The reason for which Rezaie and Karoubi had to be assigned such implausibly low totals was to make sure Ahmadinejad got over 51% of the vote and thus avoid a run-off between him and Mousavi next Friday, which would have given the Mousavi camp a chance to attempt to rally the public and forestall further tampering with the election.
This scenario accounts for all known anomalies and is consistent with what we know of the major players.
On point 5, the uniformity of the results (both across different provinces and chronoloigcally, as they were progressively announced by the electoral authority) are probably the most damning evidence:
The Iranian officials have already moved to expel foreign journalists from the country ("for their own safety"), but the size and ferocity of the protests are plenty evident from the amateur footage that is trickling onto the internet:
I'm not sure what's likely to come of all this, but one can only suggest that the legitmacy of Khomeni's power is going to be threatened in the long run. I'm not sure that Mousavi would be a substantially more progressive leader than Ahmadinejad (especially as far as the west is concerned - the nuclear issue wouldn't go away anytime soon) but the ferocity of these protests suggests that the mood for change in that direction at least exists at the grassroots of Iranian society, certainly in the more cosmopolitan urban areas. I think it may be a bit much to hope that this is the stirrings of that long overdue secular revolution that we've all been waiting for, but it's certainly a welcome step in the right direction.
Lemonad
At least they're doing something about it, when Bush won by electoral fraud, the monkeys in America didn't do about it.
EDIT
Why'd you delete your post Q5echo?
Krypton
Finally, the counter-Revolution has finally arrived. Those of you who wanted to force regime change on Iran, you look stupid right now.
Renegade
quote:
Yes, the president of Iran's own election monitoring commission has declared the result invalid and called for a do-over. That is huge news: when a regime's own electoral monitors beak ranks, what chance does the regime have of persuading anyone in the world or Iran that it has democratic legitimacy? Second:
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Stratfor is reporting that Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, head of the Expediency Council, has resigned. Though unconfirmed, the report is saying that Rafsanjani is resigning from his position as head of the Expediencey Council, NOT his position as the leader of the Assembly of Experts, which has oversight responsibility over the office of the Supreme Leader and would be responsible for naming Ayatollah Khamenei’s successor.
thought about it. wanted to be serious and respect Renegade's thread and not be silly.
the only thing that should concern anybody to the degree they feel Iran should be punished by the international community is their non-compliance with the IAEA and UN resolutions. that's it. proxy armies, fascist hegemony, exporting terror, all of those things can be dealt with. everything else is their business. if they want another revolution, more power to them, but anybody who's familiar with how the Mullahs take care of their business won't be so easily enamored by some post-election unruliness.
Iran had a moderate President not too long ago. and if i recall, it was under his administration that their current nuclear ambitions were set forward. why would i want another moderate face-of-the-ruling-Persian-class whispering sweet-nothings in my ear one minute and weaponizing their nuclear endeavors the next? i'd rather have Ahmedinejad in my face telling me what he's going to do and how he's going to do it. i need clarity because clarity is good when nukes are involved.
Q5echo
quote:
Originally posted by Krypton
Finally, the counter-Revolution has finally arrived. Those of you who wanted to force regime change on Iran, you look stupid right now.
fortunately, for the rest of us:rolleyes:, it doesn't require the crushing hand of Islamic fascism to make us look stupid, ever.
thank you Jesus!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!*grabs a handfull of snakes and dances around the stage like a monkey*
pkcRAISTLIN
quote:
Originally posted by Q5echo
thought about it. wanted to be serious and respect Renegade's thread and not be silly.
the only thing that should concern anybody to the degree they feel Iran should be punished by the international community is their non-compliance with the IAEA and UN resolutions. that's it. proxy armies, fascist hegemony, exporting terror, all of those things can be dealt with. everything else is their business. if they want another revolution, more power to them, but anybody who's familiar with how the Mullahs take care of their business won't be so easily enamored by some post-election unruliness.
Iran had a moderate President not too long ago. and if i recall, it was under his administration that their current nuclear ambitions were set forward. why would i want another moderate face-of-the-ruling-Persian-class whispering sweet-nothings in my ear one minute and weaponizing their nuclear endeavors the next? i'd rather have Ahmedinejad in my face telling me what he's going to do and how he's going to do it. i need clarity because clarity is good when nukes are involved.
yeah, i see this, i really do. but who can predict what effect the election of a moderate at the minute might do in a dozen years from now? the first slight change in breeze has to happen at some time. i think irrespective of US desires, the iranian people deserve to be free of Ahmedinejad as much as the US deserved to be rid of bush.
Q5echo
quote:
Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN
but who can predict what effect the election of a moderate at the minute might do in a dozen years from now?
who says Israel has that kind of time?
Q5echo
quote:
Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN
the iranian people deserve to be free of Ahmedinejad as much as the US deserved to be rid of bush.
thats the difference between an election and a revolution. i think what you're really asking for the Iranian people is the destruction of the current system. i mean, what would a moderate do during his Presidency that Ahmedinejad hasn't done before that would put Iran, as a nation, in better stead with the International community, much less the greater Middle East? what could a moderate do?
pkcRAISTLIN
quote:
Originally posted by Q5echo
i think what you're really asking for the Iranian people is the destruction of the current system.
well yeah, that would be nice but im no hippy idealist pot smoker. im just a regular kind of pot smoker.
quote:
Originally posted by Q5echo
i mean, what would a moderate do during his Presidency that Ahmedinejad hasn't done before that would put Iran, as a nation, in better stead with the International community, much less the greater Middle East? what could a moderate do?
not make such a cunt of himself?
i understand your cynicism but i think you should support any kind of electoral expression available in the country and denounce anything approaching vote-rigging. and i think you of all people should support mass demonstration that constitutes the people rather than the leadership.
Q5echo
quote:
Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN
not make such a cunt of himself?
sure, but what kind of cvnt are we talking about? a hippie idealist cvnt (any moderate President) or just a regular cvnt (Ahmedinejad). same cvnt IMO if said cvnt works for the same ruling cvnts.
quote:
i understand your cynicism but i think you should support any kind of electoral expression available in the country and denounce anything approaching vote-rigging. and i think you of all people should support mass demonstration that constitutes the people rather than the leadership.
of course.
DJ Damerchi
ahmedinejad was pulling really funky moves right before the election date like blocking social networking sites altogether to prevent organization of anti-ahmedinejad rallies.
Even if he wins the redo, the political environment will be quite different I suppose. The techy savy university culture will not tolerate this much longer.
