Sunday, June 21, 2009

IRAN ELECTIONS: PROOF OF FRAUD


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8110877.stm


Monitors from their campaign teams, who by law are allowed to oversee every polling station, were issued with invalid ID cards or refused entry.


There was a 10-fold increase in the number of mobile polling stations - ballot boxes transported from place to place by agents of the interior ministry, which was run by a close ally of Mr Ahmadinejad. They were out of the control of the local authorities and the representatives of the candidates, and nobody knows what they have done to them.


Early on polling day, the SMS network was shut down, that made people keep guessing about what was going on.


Then the interior ministry [where results from polling stations around the country are collated] started kicking out its own employees so that just a few personnel and the top officials were left


Despite the high turnout, the count was remarkably quick, and the results unusually consistent, with none of the typical variations between different regions and cities.


For example, in Mr Mousavi's home province of East Azerbaijan, which is known to have fierce regional and ethnic loyalties to the reformist candidate, he polled far worse than expected. And the liberal cleric Mehdi Karroubi polled 5% in Lorestan, despite having won 55% there in the first round of voting in 2005 when he also stood as a candidate.


In some provinces like Khoresan or Mazandaran the number of people who voted exceeded the number of eligible voters in those provinces. If they wanted to manipulate the election results as they have done before, they could have done it in a more elegant and delicate way. This was not a manipulation, this is a coup.



The Guardian Council, the country's highest supervisory committee is investigating 646 complaints of misconduct. It's an admission there were irregularities. The problem is, the Guardian Council is headed by a cleric, who is a far-right hardliner and known big supporter of Mr Ahmadinejad. Asking that body to review the ballot is like putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop.

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