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Stealing the Village Vote

[New York Times] Eric Hooglund - Is it possible that rural Iran provided Ahmadinejad the 63% of the vote he claims to have won? That would contradict my own research in Iran's villages over the past 30 years. In Bagh-e Iman, a village near Shiraz, people are seething with outrage because at least two-thirds believe that the presidential election was stolen by Ahmadinejad. During campaigning the week before, it became evident that support for Mir Hossein Mousavi was overwhelming. The president is unpopular in most of the villages around Shiraz primarily because of his failure to deliver on the reforms he promised in his 2005 presidential campaign. In previous elections, a committee comprised of representatives from each political faction had counted and certified the results right in the village. This time, Interior Ministry officials came from Shiraz, sealed the ballot boxes and took them away even before the end of voting at 9 p.m. The writer is professor of politics at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, and editor of Middle East Critique.
2009-06-19 06:00:00
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