Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Saturday, June 13, 2009

A real election?

Was it a real campaign and election? Or were Western observers and journalists misled by watching and reporting on only a select portion of the country and electorate? Of course, we could be skeptical of results reported by the BBC that "show Mr Ahmadinejad winning strongly even in the heartland of Mr Mousavi..."

Ahmadinejad wins Iran presidential election
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been re-elected as president of Iran in a resounding victory, the interior minister says.

He won some 62.6% of the vote in an election marked by a turnout of more than 80%, official figures show...

Iran's Supreme Leader congratulated Mr Ahmadinejad on his win...

In a statement, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei praised the high turnout and described the count as a huge success and called for calm in the aftermath of the result.

"Other honourable candidates must refrain from any kind of provocative and distrustful words or deeds," the ayatollah said...

Mr Mousavi issued a statement shortly after 1300 local time (0930 GMT) on Saturday, after the scale of the hard-line president's victory became clear.

The former prime minister dismissed the election result as deeply flawed.

"I personally strongly protest the many obvious violations and I'm warning I will not surrender to this dangerous charade," the Reuters news agency reported him as saying.

"The result of such performance by some officials will jeopardise the pillars of the Islamic Republic and will establish tyranny."...


Labels: ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home