Monday, July 20, 2009

So what happened inside the Iranian election?

There was only one poll carried out by a western news organization. It was jointly commissioned by the BBC and ABC News, and conducted by an independent entity called the Center for Public Opinion (CPO) of the New America Foundation. The CPO has a reputation of conducting accurate opinion polls, not only in Iran, but across the Muslim world since 2005. The poll, conducted a few weeks before the elections, predicted an 89 percent turnout rate. Further, it showed that Ahmadinejad had a nationwide advantage of two to one over Mousavi.

 

“It is over!” Ali proclaims at 8am as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s lead is near 65%. He is declared winner by all media by 10am. There is a major challenge from Mousavi and that will not quiet down any time soon. There were about 300 representatives from the International press in Tehran for the election.

 

According to official results, there were 46.2 million registered voters in Iran. The turnout was massive, as predicted by the CPO. Almost 39.2 million Iranians participated in the elections for a turn out rate of 85 percent, in which about 38.8 million ballots were deemed valid (about 400,000 ballots were left blank). Officially, President Ahmadinejad received 24.5 million votes to Mousavi’s 13.2 million votes, or 62.6 per cent to 33.8 per cent of the total votes, respectively. In fact, this result mirrored the 2005 elections when Ahmadinejad received 61.7 per cent to former President Hashemi Rafsanjani’s 35.9 per cent in the runoff elections. Two other minor candidates, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohsen Rezaee, received the rest of the votes in this election. (from Paul Craig Roberts, June 09)

 

Most people seemed shocked by the intensity of the opposition and how instantly it became so highly organized. (We wonder what's up with that?) Accusations of fraud, vote rigging came from all directions in speeches, newspapers, television, and on the internet. But so much of it comes from Western media repeating (over and over) unconfirmed sources in Iran--or selective bits and pieces that made everything appear worse than it was. By Saturday night, I believe most of the internet and foreign television had been cut off or severely limited. I don't think there is a rule book about how to react to these kinds of things. By Sunday everything was mostly back to normal.

 

There were more rallies and speeches and hundreds of thousands of people in the streets on several occasions. The speeches at Friday Prayers are especially important and receive high attendance and television coverage.

 

When a man throws a Molotov cocktail (a burning bottle of gasoline) into a broken bank window or a stranded bus, that becomes another matter. As I experienced in 1978, it was tried again, but this time cooler heads prevailed and everything has quieted down and hopefully is moving back into discussion, debate and the judicial system. I believe that extreme violent action does not represent disappointed voters, but rather an attempt to initiate political conflict that is only using the election as an excuse. Then the violence on all sides becomes wrong and out of place in a civilized society.

 

Your comments are welcome.

 


Comments

  1. Ronald JamesJuly 25, 2009 at 11:07 AM

    Hi: Very interesting. I think that we share at least one thing; we are walking, talking, bundles of perplexity. As you were headed east I was headed west. I am in Guatemala organizing resistance to the Guatemalan Militaries involvement in the drug trade. This was prompted by the murder of several of our workers and the torching of a commissary and medical clinic that we support.

    How long will you be in Iran and do you intend to return to Belize?

    ReplyDelete

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