Iranian Reformer Claims Widespread Voter Fraud in Lopsided Results
By Susie Madrak Saturday Jun 13, 2009 12:00pmWow, Iran is actually more like America than I thought! I wonder when the president's going to send in his thugs to shut down the vote count?
TEHRAN, June 13 -- Iran's election commissioner declared Saturday that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won a decisive victory in most of the country's electoral districts in Friday's presidential election, but the incumbent's leading challenger protested the results, charging widespread vote fraud and vowing to resist a "dangerous manipulation" of the balloting.
Mir Hossein Mousavi, a former prime minister who waged a heated campaign against Ahmadinejad's bid for reelection, urged his supporters to reject a "governance of lie and dictatorship."
"I'm warning that I won't surrender to this manipulation," Mousavi said in a statement posted on his Web site Saturday. He said the announced results were "shaking the pillars of the Islamic Republic of Iran's sacred system" and represented "treason to the votes of the people." He warned that the public would not "respect those who take power through fraud."
Mousavi made the comments after Iran's election chief, Kamran Daneshjoo, said on state television that Ahmadinejad received nearly 21.8 million votes, or more than 63 percent, of the nearly 34.4 million valid votes cast in 346 of Iran's 366 electoral districts. He said Mousavi received 11.7 million votes, or 34 percent.
However, officials delayed without explanation an expected announcement of the complete results, which news agencies said suggested intervention by Iran's Islamic authorities to tamp down a potentially volatile situation.
Riot police cordoned off the Interior Ministry, which directed Friday's voting, and stood guard around key government buildings.
Plainclothes officers fired tear gas to disperse a cheering crowd outside Mousavi's campaign headquarters after the pivotal presidential election ended in confusion, with both sides claiming victory.
NIAGARA FALLS, Ontario – The U.S. on Saturday refused to accept hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's claim of a landslide re-election victory in Iran and said it was looking into allegations of election fraud.
"We are monitoring the situation as it unfolds in Iran, but we, like the rest of the world, are waiting and watching to see what the Iranian people decide," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said at a news conference with Canada's foreign affairs minister, Lawrence Cannon.Minutes after Clinton spoke, the White House released a two-sentence statement praising "the vigorous debate and enthusiasm that this election generated, particularly among young Iranians," but expressing concern about "reports of irregularities."
Login or Register to post comments.
Wheres Jimmy Carter?
After Bush V Gore we are in no position to lecture another nation on free and fair elections. Just another in a long list of ways the GOP has undermined America's moral standing in the world.
We had to deal with our unelected hard-liner despot for 8 years and we will still be dealing with the aftermath for some time to come. I sincerely hope the Iranians do better with their stolen election than we made out with ours.
The only way the Iranians can do better is to simply NOT accept the proposed election results until formal claims based on actual evidence are fully investigated.
Those contesting the election must ORGANIZE and gather information based on facts. Data collection is critical during this time of unrest. Rioting will only benefit the current power structure. Civil disobedience is far more effective.
Ive been watching the news on this, I have also been sending comments to the news agency's wondering why they cant see the connection between Iran's dictatorship and Bush. I simply gave them the out of to much entertainment reporting.
Truth is America has no room to comment on this, we still can't come together and clean up damage from the past 8 or nine years from fraud and war crimes. I tried to start a blogg on another site its pretty difficult to get people interested in talking.
in the foot. Read Media Matters article on NYT's AMA article lately. You'll love it.
This sorta stuff does not happen here?
Power does what Power does... and I am pretty certain that we are involved behind the scenes.
Not that it is wrong-- hopefully we are doing the right thing and will allow the Iranian human beings to fulfill their fullest potential of freedom.
hahahhahaha
That was so great I could barley type.
capable of fighting their own battles. Who do we think we are? We don't even have affordable health care for most of our citizens. Those days of holding ourselves up as shining examples of defenders of democracy and freedom are over. We no longer have the moral authority to "allow" anyone to do anything.
Iran will only be able to endure this crap if we don't use this as the argument for "regime change" over there. Ahmadinejad must really want to be this generation's Vietcong, it seems.
You know, like Bush was for Cheney.
Their candidates are all vetted by the Ayatollahs, so the candidates differ very little from each other. It's a lot like elections in the PRC or the former USSR, where the choices are/were between representatives of different factions within the same party.
For the west, and the US government in particular, to get their damn noses out of Iran's business period. What nation in the world actually has valid, honest elections? Show me one. It doesn't exist. Period. Leaders are chosen by the rich elite oligarchs, and then you get the choice between lying butthead A or snivelling lying butthead B. Sometimes, like in Canada, you get the multiple choice. Who you wanna vote for? This lying party, that lying party, or hey, howz about a little Hope and Change that has been shown to be little more than BS. If people truly had the ability to select and elect their leaders, you would see very few of these lifelong politicians anywhere on the globe. It's all a farce.
If we do what we are supposed to do, what a good relative would do..
We would allow them to work it out for themselves, while providing positive reinforcement.
If something is worth doing.. it is worth doing correctly.
Holding coup's and putting in people like Saddam, Shah, Pinochet, etc, etc, etc, etc.. is not the correct way to build a house.
Which is why the end result looks like a paper mache castle after 6 months in the rain forest...
If mean fark.. if you are going to hold a coup-- at least put a Martin Luther King in there...
There are good people in the world.. there are leaders that actually care about their fellow citizens ---
Unlike our even historic selections-- ahem Chalabi
I do not mean to be snarky if English is your second language, so is it?
They should just ignore the votes and have their supreme court anoint a leader like civilized nations do.
Ha! I see you are trying to make me spill my coffee all over myself this morning
As hopeful as we all were, I think we all knew deep down, that Mousavi didn't really have a chance. Even if there wasn't any fraud involved (which there surely is!) and Mousavi won the election, his opponent probably would have had him assassinated shortly thereafter anyway.
Hossein Mousavi's followers won't go quietly into that good night. I'm sure Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hopes they will, but undoubtedly the people are not going to stand for this voter fraud. Sadly, this is probably the beginning of months with blood running in the streets of Iran. Since the Khemeni isn't about to release his hold on authority by overturning the results, I hope with all my heart that Ahmadinejad will listen to the people and change his volatile actions and hateful rhetoric. Probably won't happen, but we can hope.
They are not savages. There won't be blood running in the streets. The people will just point and laugh at the clown the way we did to Bush.
Try changing Hossein Mousavi in your comment to Al Gore/John Kerry and change Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to George W. Bush.
I thought the American people would not stand for it either. There doesn't have to actually be blood letting when the life of democracy is sucked our of you from the inside.
"it's a coup"
I haven't seen such fallout in the aftermath of an election in a long time. There were throngs of protesters in the streets. If this election was rigged, and considering the history of Ahmanutjob, then it should come as no surprise that he won by a "landslide." Shameful. Where's Jimmy Carter is right!
http://blackpoliticalthought.blogspot.com
people in all these other countries are willing to take to the streets when they realize their elections were fucked with. In America, we just shrug and bitch for four years.
Every single person in the entire country, regardless of age, even infants, voted for Kim Jong-il. That's a landslide.
weak with surprise.
I am just shocked!
it was gonna happen when of the top military brass said they were prepared to "crush" any kind of colored revolution. He said they had intel that said the reformists were going to claim the election was rigged if they lost. It smelled like a rotten fish then and it stinks even more a few days later.
The American Right wing are happy.
The last thing they want is an Iranian leader that can..ugh.. be negotiated with.
Al Gore and his supporters were too cowardly to take to the streets as Mousavi and his party has. As a result we and the world were stuck with the Bush criminal empire and millions of people suffered. If the founding fathers of the USA had been as cowardly as Gore, "impeachment off the table" Pelosi, and the members of Congress who stand in the way of torture and war crimes investigations and prosecutions, there would have never been a United States of America. Our so-called "leaders" and "representatives" are so cowardly and corrupted by our system that there is no way to avoid our fate: certain destruction. Better get busy learning the hundreds of Chinese dialects if you want to survive, folks.
"Whatever name you want to give them, they all fit the description of genuine American proto-fascists."
-David Neiwert...Recalling an early time in Idaho
Is the Modern Iran a Proto-Fascist State?
Fascist Warning Signs
#1: Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.
#2: Disdain for the importance of human rights.
#3: Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause.
#4: The supremacy of the military/avid militarism.
#5: Rampant sexism.
#6: A controlled mass media.
#7: Obsession with national security.
#8: Religion and ruling elite tied together.
#9: Power of corporations protected.
#10: Power of labor suppressed or eliminated.
#11: Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts.
#12: Obsession with crime and punishment.
#13: Rampant cronyism and corruption.
#14: Fraudulent elections.
[ http://teresacentric.com/2007/08/is-the-moder... ]
How embarrassing that any "official" in this country has the audacity to "question" the election resulta in ANY other country!!
........pot................kettle............
"Truth can always withstand questioning"
Amended: "Blind faith turns you blind"
I can't believe the Iranian People actually believed their election would be fair. It would have been whoever the Supreme Leader wanted to be President. Why did they even bother with an election in the first place? When a country has an election, there is the assumption that there is at least some modicum of democratic principles being practiced by the government. The country is a theocratic republic. I don't think the ruling Clerics are going to allow the citizens to actually choose their own President. Besides, democratic principles and Islam simply do not mix.
Login or Register to post comments.