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." [...]
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:
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