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Ahmadinejad Declared Winner By State Media

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Elections, Iran

But it’s not over…yet.

Although I’m not sure what recourse the challenger will have given the wide margins. The “irregularities” argument only works if you’re somewhat close, and this margin is nearly 2 to 1.

From Reuters:

State media declared President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner of Iran’s election but challenger Mirhossein Mousavi alleged irregularities and claimed victory for himself.

The state election commission said early Saturday that Ahmadinejad, a hardline conservative, was ahead with 66 percent of the votes in Friday’s election after 21 million ballots were counted.

Ahmadinejad’s main challenger, moderate former prime minister Mirhossein Mousavi, had 31 percent, according to the commission, which is part of the Interior Ministry. It said 61 percent of all ballot boxes had now been counted.

The official news agency IRNA said: “Dr Ahmadinejad, by winning most votes at the 10th presidential election, has secured his victory.” It said results would be announced at 8 a.m. (0330 GMT).

Consider me incredibly disappointed. Not just because my gut was way off (supposedly), but because we have to deal with a hardliner instead of a moderate.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 12th, 2009 and is filed under Elections, Iran. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

7 Responses to “Ahmadinejad Declared Winner By State Media”

Jimmy the Dhimmi Says:
June 12th, 2009 at 9:11 pm
Its also disappointing because the whole election was a sham to begin with.
the Word Says:
June 12th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
Sham elections? Did Katherine Harris and her goons move?
Nick Benjamin Says:
June 12th, 2009 at 11:07 pm
It’ll be interesting to see what happens with Mousavi’s protest. In some places the loser always claims it was rigged. Usually Iran is not one of those places. I wouldn’t put it past Ahmadinejad to rig the election, but I’ll still be surprised if it turns out that he did. Doing so without the Ayotollah’s okay would be a remarkably stupid thing for anybody in Iran to try. And I doubt the Ayotollah would give Ahmadenihjad permission to do so. The Revolutionary Council approved all four candidates. Presumably if Mousavi was planning something they didn’t like they wouldn’t have let him run.

So I’m guessing one of two things happened. One Mousavi is making this shit up to keep his Presidential dreams alive. Two the Ayottolah really, really likes Ahmdinejad’s policies, and wants evidence those policies have widespread public support.

BTW, the most recent info from the BBC is Ahmadinejad has 65% with 80% of the ballots counted, which means he’s got the 50%+1 he needed to avoid a runoff.
Alistair Says:
June 13th, 2009 at 5:47 am
This election is no different in what happen last year in Zimbabwa but at the same time you have to wonder if some of George W Bush’s people had something to do with? After all the Neo-Cons like Joh Bolton & Daniel Pipes wanted Ahmadenihjad to win.
wj Says:
June 13th, 2009 at 11:27 am
Looking as successive reports of vote totals, the portions stay exactly the same. Which means that either exactly the same portion of voters went for each candidate, throughout the country which is unlikely in the extreme), or the reported results were unconstrained by the actual number of votes cast.

Personally, I would not call that “irregularities.” Irregularities would suggest that most of the votes were counted and reported properly, but some significant number were must counted or misreported. That is not what we seem to be seeing here. What we are seeing is a work of fiction, all the way.

I can certainly see why Mousavi is upset. The only question is, what effective action can he take? And I don’t know enough about the power relationships in Iran to make an informed guess.
Jimmy the Dhimmi Says:
June 13th, 2009 at 8:05 pm
From Daniel Pipes:

better to have a bellicose, apocalyptic, in-your-face Ahmadinejad who scares the world than a sweet-talking Mousavi who again lulls it to sleep, even as thousands of centrifuges whir away[?]
michael reynolds Says:
June 13th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
Pipes is an idiot who’s looking for another war. Needless to say he has no brilliant ideas on how we might prevail in such a war.

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