Monday, March 17, 2008

Rooz: "the most ‎controversial and rigged elections in the Islamic Republic’s history"

A headline at The Independent reads "A flawed election, but some flickers of hope." The official Iranian agencies all burbled about how the titanic turnout foiled World Arrogance conspiracies. Rooz, a website you should know about, takes a slightly different view:
‎Last Friday’s Majlis elections were, according to unofficial sources, the most ‎controversial and rigged elections in the Islamic Republic’s history. ‎

Prior to Friday’s elections, some political figures had warned about the election’s ‎integrity due to ideological affiliations between election administrators and oversight ‎committees. The earliest news reports on Friday morning indicated that soldiers ‎stationed in garrisons in Northern Tehran were "forced to vote for hardliner candidates." [...]

A news source in Tehran told Rooz that last Friday, workers working at state-owned ‎factories were forced to vote for candidates affiliated with the administration. According ‎to this source, laborers working at Saipa, Iran Khodro, and Pars Khodro auto assembly ‎plants, who were for the first time, working three shifts last Friday, were given campaign ‎material belonging to United Front candidates and asked to vote for them. More than 40 ‎thousand laborers were allegedly involved in the event. [...]

Aftab website published a letter authored by several candidates from the Broad Coalition ‎group (Etelafe Faragire Osoolgaran), a hardliner group rivaling the administration-backed ‎United Front (Jebhe Motahed). The letter revealed that the scope of vote-riggings and ‎violations were not limited to reformist candidates. In their letter, which was addressed ‎to the Guardian Council, the Broad Coalition candidates lamented frequent violations and ‎voter fraud. In the words of one analyst, in this election, "Ahamdinejad’s supporters ‎targeted not just the reformists, but also critical hardliners." [...]

No comments: