On Jun 29, 2009, at 5:43 PM, Robert Naiman wrote:
Like many Iranians, including many Iranians who didn't vote for
Ahmadinejad and don't support Ahmadinejad, but whose voices have been
largely absent from Western media, even progressive media, Habib is
deeply skeptical of opposition claims that the Presidential election
on June 12 was "stolen," and has demanded that the opposition provide
specific evidence of its claims.
<http://www.merip.org/mero/mero062809.html>
Slaps in the Face of Reason
In the early afternoon of June 13, the Ministry of Interior announced
the final “result” of the election. The turnout was a record-setting
85 percent and Ahmadinejad had won with 63 percent of the vote,
followed by Mousavi with 34 percent, with Rezaei and Karroubi earning
a mere 2 percent and less than 1 percent, respectively. These figures
were remarkably congruent with early morning returns released prior to
the closure of some overseas polls and strangely consistent across all
regions of the country.
For many Iranians, the dispute over this “result” is not simply about
the outcome -- Ahmadinejad’s anointment as president -- but about the
basic election procedures and laws that were violated. Beyond this,
many voters are insulted by the responses of both Ahmadinejad and
Khamenei to the popular skepticism, with the president-select
dismissing the protesters’ misgivings as “dirt” and the Supreme Leader
unaccountably averring that the entire nation is united behind the
official tally. The cries of CIA and MI-6 manipulation are likewise a
slap in the face of reason. The Tehran municipality, run by the
conservative mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, has estimated the number of
protesters in mid-June at 3 million. These are not only the chic
middle classes beloved of Western photographers: They are also the
women in chadors, working-class youths and older people who are
supposedly in thrall to the undying revolutionary fervor to which
Ahmadinejad appeals.
Several examples will illuminate the reasons for the rampant disbelief
in the June 12 “result.” Unlike in previous elections, the Ministry of
Interior authorized deployment of 14,000 mobile voting booths, making
it very difficult for candidates to send monitors to observe the
balloting at every booth. Some 14.5 million extra ballots, by some
reports, were printed and no clear system was delineated to track
them. When several polling stations in urban centers ran out of
ballots, Mousavi supporters asked where the extra ballots were, but
they could not be found, and remain unaccounted for to date.
Communication among campaign workers was hindered when SMS messaging
was turned off and a web page associated with the Mousavi campaign was
shut down. The popular BBC Persian service was jammed to restrict the
flow of information. In the evening of June 12, a Mousavi campaign
building was raided by the authorities, with several volunteers
detained, before being released and then rearrested the next day.
Yet the clearest violation of the law would be Mousavi and Karroubi’s
claim that their observers were not allowed to be present when ballots
were counted and the ballot boxes sealed. By law and custom, these
observers confirm that the boxes are empty before voting starts, and
they are present at the count, sign the result sheet and take away a
copy. They are also supposed to be present when the ballot boxes are
finally sealed and sent to the Interior Ministry. A 65-year old
monitor in charge of a station at a mosque in the modest, middle-class
Yousefabad neighborhood of Tehran told local journalists: “Compared to
previous elections, we had a huge turnout. Two years ago we had barely
400 votes at our station. This time, more than 2,000 voted. We closed
the station and started counting the votes. By midnight we were done.
Mousavi had 1,600 votes, Ahmadinejad approximately 300, and Karroubi
and Rezaei each had around 150 or 200. We were in the process of
filling out the forms and signing them when the announcement came that
Ahmadinejad had won with two thirds of the votes!” Interviews by local
journalists in and around the Shahid Mahallati neighborhood of
northeast Tehran, where a vast quadrant of the city is closed off in
gated communities for the families of the military, Revolutionary
Guards and intelligence personnel, indicated that even this stratum of
the electorate was divided in its choice of candidate. Several women
who live in the compound indicated that they had neighbors who
supported various candidates._______________________________________________
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