Word: fraud
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Never in the 30 years since that revolution has Iran experienced anything like the popular protests that we have seen in the past week. By now, the accusations of election fraud are fairly well known. It is implausible that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won in a landslide re-election. It is doubtful that he not only took the capital city, Tehran - the heart of the reformist movement - by a staggering 50% but also managed to win in Azerbaijan, the birthplace of his chief rival, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, by a 4-to-1 margin. (As an Azeri friend of mine said, this...
...surge in support for the pragmatic conservative candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi. The decision to hastily announce what many say was an improbable landslide victory for Ahmadinejad touched off an unprecedented wave of protests that have rocked Khamenei, who has since backtracked by ordering an investigation into claims of voter fraud. Despite violent attacks on demonstrators and arrests of political figures, security forces have in the main refrained from unleashing their repressive might on demonstrators who are openly defying the law. The partial recount of the vote has bought Khamenei time, but the crisis of legitimacy facing those in power grows...
...barely disguised public endorsement of the candidate and then rushed to proclaim Ahmadinejad's "divine victory" and order all Iranians to accept it. But the mounting instability on the streets appears to have sent Khamenei into retreat as he ordered the Guardian Council to investigate claims of electoral fraud. If the combination of escalating street demonstrations and the politicking of Mousavi's backers inside the regime's councils prompts Khamenei to conclude that an Ahmadinejad victory is untenable, he could press the Guardian Council to heed the opposition's demand for a new vote - or, more likely, "adjust" the result...
According to Maloney, the election controversy provided considerable new insight into the cleric believed to hold absolute power, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei. Everyone expected voting irregularities, she said, but not "this degree of blatant, in-your-face fraud." That Khamenei almost instantly certified the victory of his candidate, incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, dashed a central assumption about his regime: that its survival and social stability are intertwined with the legitimacy of Iran's democratic institutions. "He was willing to jettison the democratic institutions and effectively cede whatever remaining legitimacy there was in a popular vote in favor of maintaining total control...
...reliable, Western polls conducted in the run-up to the vote gave the election to Ahmadinejad - by higher percentages than the 63% he actually received. The poll even predicted that Mousavi would lose in his hometown of Tabriz, a result that many skeptics have viewed as clear evidence of fraud. The poll was taken all across Iran, not just the well-heeled parts of Tehran. Still, the poll should be read with a caveat as well, since some 50% of the respondents were either undecided or wouldn't answer...