Conservatives Win in Iranian Election
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news report 
Sunday March 23, 2008 12:52
by Bazooka Joe
Bankruptcy of Western Policy against Iran
Legislative election results emerging from Iran today show the consolidation of conservative power and the Revolutionary Guard base of President Ahmadinejad. This is an outright failure for the international sanctions and the associated propaganda drive carried out on the insistence of the US through the UN and a myriad trolls.
With 70% of the seats decided, Religious conservatives are set to hold power after about 90 remaining undecided seats are allocated. The Revolutionary Guard has been greatly strengthened with at least 120 of the 290 members of parliament being former guardsmen like President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Reformists only won 40 seats. They expected to do well in Tehran, but as yet have not managed to win a single seat there.
This is a blow to those calling for sanctions and those who have used propaganda as a means of softening the world to both the sanctions and the attack on Iran.
Some of the elected conservatives criticised Ahmadinejad's management of the economy which has produced an inflation rate of around 18% but they all support the president's position on the nuclear programme.
"Pressure will not work," said Seyed Safavi, who stood and lost in Tehran for the reformist relatively liberal National Trust party. "Is there any pressure more than war? And we lived through war with Iraq."
At this time a third wave of UN security council sanctions have been imposed on Iran, and the US recently imposed sanctions on a Bahraini bank partly owned by Iranian state-run financial institutions.
President Ahmadinejad must stand for re-election next year. He is still believed to enjoy great support amongst the urban poor, especially outside the capital, and is expected to romp home.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east...1.ece
Comments (5 of 5)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5The Islamic clergy control the selection of candidates who are uniformly conservative.
Nobody who questions the oppressive political influence of Islamic theocrats can ever stand for election.
Iran is not a democracy.
Candidates are not 'uniformly conservative'. Many Reformists stood too. They just didn't get votes. President Mohammad Khatami who succeded President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a reformist.
As for the elections being rigged, this is western propaganda. The head of a Reformist Coalition Electoral Headquarters, Hossein Marashi, is on record as saying, "WE ARE SURE THAT THE ELECTION WAS FREE AND FAIR. We also reject US and British news agencies' claim that the reformists have plan to withdraw. IT'S A MERE LIE."
In fact, because of the millions who turned out to vote across Iran Interior Ministry officials extended the opening time of the polls five times until 11pm, so that everyone could vote. This was a massive vote of support from the Iranian people for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but it does not suit the anti-Iranian propagandists to admit this.
The Iranian people have spoken. Hands off the Iranian people and their democratically elected government!
Come off it. Thousands of candidates were prevented from standing. Only a convinced supporter of the present Iranian Regime would suggest it was a fair election.
1. Nearly 90 percent of "independent and reformist candidates", including 19 sitting MP's and Ayatollah Khomeini's grandson, Ali Eshraghi, were disqualified by the the Supervisory and Executive Election Boards. AFP. 14 Mar 08.
2. The Guardian Council disqualified some 1,700 candidates for insufficient loyalty to Islam and Iranian Revolution of 1979. ISN 14 Feb 08.
3. "The Iranian authorities are effectively rigging the elections by stacking the candidate lists. It’s clear Iranian voters won’t have a free say in choosing their representatives. "
Joe Stork, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa division
The granddaughter of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini comments on Iran and the elections.
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No recreation is available to us. Arrests are the order of the day. Students are secretly arrested and imprisoned in droves," the granddaughter of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Zahra Eshraghi, told IPS in a telephone interview from Tehran. "The whole country is under pressured silence, begging to ask questions, but, unfortunately, no one in the regime is protesting," she said. "It may take many years for a person to destroy a country, but [hardliners] have managed to accomplish this in a just a few."
Since coming into office in 2005, Ahmadinejad has used the prospect of foreign threats --including the so-called "regime change" policy which has been pursued by the George W. Bush administration -- as a pretext to suppress his opponents and critics. This has been done through arrests of journalists, activists, and students. In addition, Iran's Guardian Council has halted Ahmadinejad's potential rivals from running for office by hand-picking the candidates
Her husband has been disqualified from running a reelection campaign; her brother-in law is out of power; and she has been asked by her family, who she says fear her forthright opinions, to refrain from speaking to the media.
Her last interview, with New York Times correspondent Elaine Sciolino in April 2003, sparked controversy when she was quoted as saying that she felt trapped by her family history and hated wearing the black veil known as the chador. Eshraghi, responding to protests initiated in the Iranian religious centre of Qom, later denied making the remarks. Her family also advised her not to pick fights with conservative hardliners, and she has put aside the idea of creating a blog.
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