Group items tagged

"Durability of order and continuation of the country's progress hinge on restoring public trust," Khatami, a popular reformist, said, according to the Web sites. "From the start, we said there is a legal way to regain that trust. I openly say now that the solution to get out of the current crisis is holding a referendum."

Under Iran's constitution, a referendum has to be ordered by Khamenei himself. All popular votes in Iran are monitored by an oversight body called the Guardian Council. Khatami, however, proposed that a neutral body, such as the Expediency Council, should monitor the proposed referendum instead.

Ahmad Khatami, a hardline cleric who strongly backed Mr Ahmadi-Nejad’s “landslide” victory, has called on the president to reverse his decision.Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi, one of the most influential religious leaders, on Wednesday joined the calls when he said in a religious decree that anyone who had said Iran was “a friend of [the] Israeli people” would “surely lack legitimacy” and such an appointment should be “corrected as soon as possible”.Fundamentalist parliamentarians have threatened the government with a vote of no confidence on other appointments unless Mr Mashaei steps aside.

Reformist papers have said that the premature appointment of a controversial figure before the government had been fully sworn in was a tactical move by the president to distract attention from the post-election protests

The morning after Iran's June 12 presidential election, Iranians booted up their computers to find Fars News, the online mouthpiece of the Islamic Republic's security apparatus, heralding the dawn of a "third revolution." Many an ordinary Iranian, and many a Western pundit, had already adopted such dramatic language to describe the burgeoning street demonstrations against the declaration by the Ministry of Interior that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the sitting president, had received 64 percent of the vote to 34 percent for his main challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi. But the editors of Fars News were referring neither to the protests, as were the people in the streets, nor to the prospect that the unrest might topple the Islamic Republic, as were some of the more wistful commentators. Rather, the editors were labeling the radical realignment of Iranian politics that they wish for. This realignment would complete the removal of the old guard, as did the "first" revolution of 1978-1979, and consolidate the rule of inflexible hardliners, as did the "second revolution" symbolized by the US Embassy takeover of 1979.

The number of deeply conservative voters, of the sort who back Ahmadinejad, has not exceeded 12 percent of the electorate since 1993. True, in 2003, these voters seized control of the city councils of major cities, not because of a surge in the popularity of their agenda, but because of the widespread abstention of those who had lost hope in the effectiveness of reformist candidates.

But instead greater mass participation in the local elections of 2007 cost the hardliners their grip upon local councils. In Tehran, Ahmadinejad's men lost two thirds of their seats and had to share power with reformists and moderate conservatives.

After four years in office, Ahmadinejad has filled the Interior Ministry with cronies, many of whom have connections to the Revolutionary Guards. A source who participated in closed Interior Ministry planning sessions, speaking on condition of anonymity to EurasiaNet, says top ministry personnel openly stated during one session that a repeat of the 1997 election, in which the reformist candidate, Mohammad Khatami, scored an upset victory, would not be tolerated on June 12.

By the numbers, it would seem that the country’s vast election apparatus has the ability to guarantee a favorable outcome for Ahmadinejad. According to Kamran Daneshjoo, the Interior Ministry official responsible for overseeing the voting, there are 385,000 citizens who will be administering voting precincts. The Guardian Council is expected to deploy another 340,000 people to monitor the balloting. In addition, there will be hundreds of thousands of security personnel deployed on election day. Overall, the country has about 57 million citizens of voting age, meaning that roughly 1 in 60 Iranians of voting age will be involved in some aspect of conducting the election.

For one, they note that over 59 million ballots have been printed, far more than the number of registered voters

The harsh responses and treatment that intelligence and judiciary officials of the Islamic ‎Republic of Iran have embarked against a group of political and social activists who have ‎been promoting the idea of international monitoring of Iran’s forthcoming presidential ‎elections on June 12, 2009, indicate that they view this issue to be a red line not to be ‎crossed, and if done would not be tolerated. ‎

intelligence-judiciary agents to prevent a regular meeting of ‎the members of the Committee for Free, Healthy, and Fair Elections

ayatollah Khamenei, the leader of Iran, has directly engaged ‎himself in the issue by barring, through harsh and threatening language, presidential ‎candidates and their supporters from questioning the integrity of the elections.

I think that both Mr. [Mehdi] Karroubi and Mr. [Mohammad] Khatami, when he was running, and the new entrant, Mr. [Mir-Hossein] Mussavi, have not been very specific about what is wrong with the economy and how they would fix it. When asked by an interviewer, Mr. Mussavi singled out the dismantling of the Management and Planning Organization as the major problem. But it is way down on the list of problems that I would consider serious.