By Steve Hynd
Does anyone believe a 98.91% turnout in East Ajerbaijan, a 99.43% turnout in Mazandaran or a 99.11% turnout in Yazd Province? Many of the rest are almost as bad.
(Caveat- these figures come via the neocon American Enterprise Institute and the link they provide to the original comes up as "Service Unavailable", just like the rest of the Iranian Interior Ministry's website, so the figures are currently unverifiable.)
I'm coming to the opinion that such blatant vote rigging probably wasn't needed, especially after reading a WaPo article which reports an independent poll that had Ahmadinejad ahead by 2 to 1 with a week to go.
The election results in Iran may reflect the will of the Iranian people. Many experts are claiming that the margin of victory of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the result of fraud or manipulation, but our nationwide public opinion survey of Iranians three weeks before the vote showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin -- greater than his actual apparent margin of victory in Friday's election.
...Much commentary has portrayed Iranian youth and the Internet as harbingers of change in this election. But our poll found that only a third of Iranians even have access to the Internet, while 18-to-24-year-olds comprised the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all age groups.
The only demographic groups in which our survey found Mousavi leading or competitive with Ahmadinejad were university students and graduates, and the highest-income Iranians. When our poll was taken, almost a third of Iranians were also still undecided. Yet the baseline distributions we found then mirror the results reported by the Iranian authorities, indicating the possibility that the vote is not the product of widespread fraud.
Either 1) the incumbent and his military allies panicked when they didn't have to after a stream of media reports about Mousavi's popularity or 2) they decided the time was ripe to seize power entirely away from Iran's other vested-interest elites. Brian Ulrich sets out the reasoning behind the second option here and adds.
This election featured a rift in the establishment caused by a scheming Supreme Leader and an arrogant showman of a president who alienated both an old guard of kleptocrats and a population which has never been loathe to vote reformists into office. The kleptocrats in question helped keep the political space open for the Mousavi campaign, only to be thwarted by enemies who would brook no dissent. However, against the expectations of many, including me, it is the voices of the people, however, who with their voices and bodies demand the democracy the regime keeps insisting they have, who keep that space open, and Mousavi himself, a man who bridges several worlds, who appears to be the first in a generation with both the power and the will to lead them.
The Iranian system of government we have known for 30 years is no more. What will take its place, however, is not yet decided.
What AEI is reporting is what the interior ministry had on their website, so far as I know.
ReplyDeleteMost of the Ahmadinejad-leaning and many of government portals are hacked (or when not possible, turned down by massive attackers). adlroom kayhnannews rajanews farsnews and so on...
The Problem is that none of this kind of discussion is scientific. For God's sake, one has to have a memory of more than one election cycle to be able to judge....and not having access to any stats and based solely on what I remember, this has been a problem in many previous elections. It appears they do a very poor job on the eligible column. In particular, I remember in Majlis election of March 2004, some precincts had turnout of above 100 % .
Besides, do you really think they couldn't fudge the results better. The whole thing appears B*S*. I am now leaning toward a a fourth narrative, a coup, but a coup planned by Mirdamadi, Reza (not mohammad) Khatami, and Tajzadeh, to dethrone Khamenei. Admittedly this is based on hearsay to, but I found it more believable. Mousavi's economic when, e.g., mousavi's economic advisor says on Friday afternoon that 30m are going to vote for mousavi, when their best bet was to bring the election to a second round.
Or when karroubi objects the results, while his campaign manager (karbaschi) publicly voted for mousavi and asked others to do the same (decency!!). And then the supposedly actual results jokingly put karroubi above Ahmadinejad.
Also, I link again to my post here where I show their most important evidence is just pure lie using stats.
Hope this helps people get out of their whitemanesque observations.
I wrote about this last week. The Supreme Leader of Iran is the one who makes all the rules in Iran. He makes all the decisions in the country or controls all the decisions.
ReplyDeleteIn order to even be on the ballot you must be approved by a 12 person panel. 6 of that panel are appointed by the Supreme Leader and the other 6 are appointed by a group that is hand picked by the Supreme Leader.
Read more about it here and stick around for more good stuff-
http://libertarianhumor.com/2009/06/12/iran/
Steve quoting a WaPo poll? As accurate? Give me a couple moments I've got some cognitive dissonance to deal with.
ReplyDeleteLOL Peter. It's not the WaPo though, it's The Center for Public Opinion and the New America Foundation.
ReplyDeleteRegards, Steve
I stand corrected (well technically I'm sitting) and relieved. Apparently the time-space continuum remains intact.
ReplyDeleteRegards, Peter
Steve Hynd,
ReplyDeleteIran has not announced the breakdown of the participation in each province. The source your talking about is 100% false. This article is a complete propoganda. As a writer with any sense of responsibility you should never put out this garbage. Regardless of the warning you put there. many people do not pay attention to the details but rather look at the table and take it as real. All your doing is inciting hate and lies.
Please act responsibly.
Thanks
Mike