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Ahmadinejad's dirty landslide - -

By Editors



Ahmadinejad¡¯s Dirty Landslide
By the Editors

The National Review

Many Iranians are displaying the courage of despair, in the knowledge that they have been deceived and cheated. They were promised an election for president. The incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a fanatic who has alienated huge sections of the population, and Iranians¡¯ hope was that this election would provide some sort of test of public opinion. Not the independent official that the title seems to describe, the president is responsible for putting into practice the policies of the ¡°supreme leader,¡± and as such he is hardly more than a public dogsbody.  Under the disguise of clerical robes and turbans, the Islamic Republic is a classic example of thugocracy.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, evidently believed that the electoral maneuver could be carried out as usual, according to his sole and uncontested will. He may even believe that he is popular and respected. So an election with the superficial air of a contest was arranged. A field of 475 possible candidates (no women, naturally) was whittled down to Ahmadinejad and three elderly members of the Islamic establishment. Khamenei and Ahmadinejad prepared to coast to victory.

One of the three selected elders, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, quite unexpectedly turned out to be willing and able to criticize Ahmadinejad, and emerged as a figurehead for genuine opposition.  Pres. Barack Obama was excited by what he described as ¡°a robust debate,¡± though this soon enough proved to have no content. Ahmadinejad accused Mousavi of ¡°Hitler-style¡± smears and falsifications, and of having Zionist links. The Iranian ballot is not secret; voters can be identified and punished. Huge numbers of blank ballot papers were available to the authorities. Suspect Web sites and publications were closed down. Foreign observers were forbidden. So when the votes were counted, Ahmadinejad was found to have about 63 percent, with a majority in every sector ¡ª ethnic minorities, women, students, and so on. Mousavi received about 33 percent, and, although he is an Azeri, he was declared to have been outvoted in his own Azeri province, thus confirming the unstoppable zeal of those who had rigged the outcome.









    
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