The Telegraph reports Iran protest cancelled as leaked election results show Mahmoud Amadinejad came third.
"Iran's reformist presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi has called off a major rally to protest last Friday's election results, amid claims police had been cleared to open fire on protesters."
"The statistics, circulated on Iranian blogs and websites, claimed Mr Mousavi had won 19.1 million votes while Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won only 5.7 million. The two other candidates, reformist Mehdi Karoubi and hardliner Mohsen Rezai, won 13.4 million and 3.7 million respectively. The authenticity of the leaked figures could not be confirmed."
Then again, Politico says Ahmadinejad won. Get over it. "Without any evidence, many U.S. politicians and “Iran experts” have dismissed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s reelection Friday, with 62.6 percent of the vote, as fraud. They ignore the fact that Ahmadinejad’s 62.6 percent of the vote in this year’s election is essentially the same as the 61.69 percent he received in the final count of the 2005 presidential election, when he trounced former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani." He doesn't mention the leaked figures.
3 comments:
So maybe Ahmadinejad won, but he made it look dirty while he was doing it. I know that Iran is not a free country, but I was feeling optimistic that no matter how much I might agree or disagree with a particular countries politics, it really looked like they were having a reasonably free election whether we liked who won or not.
Seems to me that Ahminejad got nervous, started doing things like shutting down text messaging, and the internet and other communication tools which made it look like he was trying to manipulate the election. Suppose now that he has won with 60% or so of the vote. It looks tainted and now his job of governing is now much more difficult. If they had been as open as possible and he had won, then it would be clearer that he is the legitemately elected candidate, all other things being equal in Iran's not quite free political system.
We might not ever know what the real results were. Even if he won with 51%, I would think tampering with election results is illegal in Iran. If that's what he did, he'd be a criminal regardless of if he really won. Similar to Nixon.
Good point. If he tampered with the election or tried to and it can be proven and it is illegal in Iran, it doesn't matter if he won. I was actually blind to that outcome until you put it that way.
Good luck to the Iranians for prosecuting him. I suppose this could end peacefully with Ahmadinejad resigning and a new election (if that is what their laws say), but I doubt that would happen no matter how hopeful I would be.
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