Irregularities found in Iranian election

22 Jun 2009, 11:57 am   -   Source: AFP
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Figures from Iran's disputed presidential election show "irregularities" in the turnout and "highly implausible" swings to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to an analysis published in the UK.

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Figures from Iran's disputed presidential election show "irregularities" in the turnout and "highly implausible" swings to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to an analysis published in the UK.
  
There would have to have been a radical shift in rural voting patterns and a "highly unlikely" change in heart among former reformist voters for Ahmadinejad to win as he did, said independent British think tank Chatham House.
  
Their analysis of interior ministry figures found that overall, there was a 50.9 percent swing to the president.
  
The results also suggested he had won the support of 47.5 percent of those who had backed reformist candidates in the 2005 election.
  
"This, more than any other result, is highly implausible and has been the subject of much debate in Iran," the study said.
  
It also revealeds that in two conservative provinces, Mazandaran and Yazd, the turnout was more than 100 percent -- a trend it said was "problematic", although admittedly not unprecedented in Iranian elections.
  
Ahmadinejad was re-elected in the June 12 poll but his main challenger, former premier Mir Hossein Mousavi has complained of irregularities.
  
Tens of thousands of his supporters have taken to the streets demanding a recount, sparking a crackdown by the authorities.
  
This new analysis of the results was edited by Professor Ali Ansari, director of the Institute of Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews.
  
It challenges the suggestion that Ahmadinejad's victory was due to the massive participation of a previously silent conservative majority.
  
Chatham House says that in 1997, 2001 and 2005, "conservative candidates and Ahmadinejad in particular were markedly unpopular in rural areas".
  
But the results this year showed the president had done remarkably well in the countryside.
  
"This increase in support for Ahmadinejad amongst rural and ethnic minority voters is out of step with previous trends, extremely large in scale and central to the question of why (or indeed whether) he won in June 2009," it said.
  
The president received about 13 million more votes in this year's election than the combined conservative vote in 2005, according to official data.
  
To reach the totals recorded by the Iranian authorities in 10 of the 30 provinces, Ahmadinejad would have had to have won over all new voters, all former centrist voters and up to 44 percent of former reformist voters.
  
Many of these provinces are where reformist candidate Mehdi Karroubi did well in 2005, and suggest his supporters this year decided not to back the main reformist challenger, Mousavi, but hardline conservative Ahmadinejad instead.
  
"To many reformists, this situation is extremely unlikely," the report said, noting that Karroubi is "of polar opposite views to Ahmadinejad on issues of political and cultural freedoms, economic management and foreign policy."
  
Karroubi had commanded strong support in rural areas in 2005, yet his vote collapsed entirely this year, even in his home province of Lorestan where his share of the vote went from 55.5 percent in 2005 to just 4.6 percent in 2009.
  
Ahmadinejad's supporters claim that Karroubi and Ahmadinejad have a similar appeal as "men of the people" which explains the trend, Chatham House noted.

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