Analysis of the Results of the Presidential Elections of the
2005 and 2009 of the Islamic Republic of Iran
Why the outcome of the elections of the 12th June 2009 cannot be considered as legitimated?
Authors:
Masoud Azari
Behrooz Bayat
Behrooz.bayat@aon.at
+43 699 18589098
A Publication of United Republicans of Iran June 28, 2009.
International@jomhouri.com
Executive Summary
In the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) the requirements for an election to be free and fair is missing. The following limiting factors give rise to an election process with a high probability of bias and/or fraud.
A lack of equal rights for the citizens,
Restrictions are posed on nascent political parties,
Limited access to the media,
The Guardian Council (GC) acting as a filter whilst ratifying the candidates,
The interference by the Supreme Leader and the armed forces in the electoral process,
Fraudulent interventions of the state institutions via the Elections Executive favoring a particular candidate.
The analysis of the official polling results in 2005 and 2009 leads to the following conclusions:
Voting pattern of the Iranian in many provinces and in the rural areas is predominantly driven by ethnicity.
The high turnout of the voters (85% in 2009 versus 60% in 2005) as a result of the mobilization of the “silent” citizens usually leads to reformist and moderate candidates to be elected.
There is no indication that the votes of this group must end up in Ahmadinejad basket.
The alleged extreme increase of Ahmadinejad votes (up to 1000% as against the results of 2005 presidential elections) does not correspond with the economic and social records after 4 years of his administration.
There are significant indications that the figures are almost certainly manipulated ineptly and engineered by a group lacking any care for propriety. Just as two examples, at least in two provinces the participation of voters was more than 100% of the eligible citizens. Furthermore in the province of Lorestan more than 10% of the ballot boxes have totals being exactly multiples of 100 ( e.g. 21 boxes with 700 votes, 20 boxes with 800, 6 boxes with 1500, etc.)
Introduction:
The totally unexpected outcome of the recent presidential elections in the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and the ensuing political earthquake as its aftermath motivated many observers to launch analytical studies to make sense of and to verify the results.
Several approaches were reported:
• A pure theoretical analysis based on the official election data
• An empirical analysis of the data
• A factor by factor analysis of the political environment before, during and after polling and an empirical analysis of the official polling data
This paper applies the latter method considering the situation on the political ground and then attempts to analyse the turnout figures published officially by the government of the IRI.
The political analysis is based on the statements of three opposition candidates, the announcements of the official institutions of the IRI ( , , , ) as well as the monitoring of the political events by the authors of this paper.
Political environment: Some of the most crucial prerequisites of a free and fair election are the following:
1. Equal rights for all citizens.
2. Freedom of speech and expression of opinions.
3. Freedom to build parties, unions, NGOs etc.
4. Freedom of having / having access to press and media.
5. Each citizen has to be potentially eligible to nominate him/herself as a candidate to be elected.
6. Competitiveness of the election shall be guaranteed.
7. The voting procedure shall be free and fair, assuring the secrecy of the individual votes.
8. The counting of the votes has to be performed under supervision of the representatives of all candidates.
The elections in the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) have never been free and fair. However before the current (10th period) presidential election two components of the above mentioned prerequisites were to some extent respected: The candidates who had been preselected by the Guardian Council, competed in an environment of more or less irregularities but the counting of the votes was carried out to a tolerable standard of fairness.
During the current presidential election the IRI leadership has broken with this tradition and eliminated the last legitimate vestiges of the election process.
The following paragraphs, explain crucial aspects of the current presidential elections with a view to show why the recent election results most probably do not reflect the will of a majority of voters, but that almost certainly, we are faced with a huge fraud and vote rigging.
The situation as it seemed prior to the election campaigns;-
Lack of Equal Rights:
In the IRI citizens do not have equal rights to participate as candidates in the electoral procedure. There is discrimination on the basis of gender, religious minorities and secular citizens. More over there is also discrimination within the Shia communities between those who are tightly aligned with Ayatollah Khamenei and the rest of the Muslims.
Restriction for Building Political Parties etc.
With the exception of the opposition candidate Mr. Karoubi the remaining main opposition parties and candidates are either considered as illegal or are living in a purgatorial state between legality and illegality.
Lack of Access to Media:
They have no access to state controlled mass media like newspapers, TV and radio broadcasting. Hundreds of the reformist newspapers and publications are forbidden and closed. Communication via the internet is also severely controlled and restricted, either by direct prosecution of the bloggers, by filtering web sites or by reducing the bandwidth for internet communication. It is not allowed to organize rallies, meetings or demonstrations.
Lack of the Right to Apply for Candidacy- Filtering by Guardian Council:
Of the approximately 500 citizens (including 30 women) applying for the candidacy for president only 4 applicants were selected by the Guardian Council (GC). The supreme leader Mr. Khamenei has frequently backed the government of Mr. Ahamdinejad. The Guardian Council responsible for the supervision of electoral processes consists of 12 members, six clerics nominated by the Supreme Leader directly, and 6 lawyers chosen by the Head of the IRI Judiciary (a Supreme Leader appointee in his own right) to be approved by the parliament. In other words, all members of the Guardian Council are directly or indirectly linked to the Supreme Leader. Moreover, not only repeated interventions were observed by several GC clerics in favor of Ahmadinejad but two members had been given concurrent responsibilities in his cabinet - Mr. Elham as Justice Minister and spokesman and Mr. Azizi as vice-president.
Thus it can be easily envisaged that the GC is strongly biased in favor of Mr. Ahmadinejad and has acted in a partisan manner.
Involvement of the Military Institutions:
Contrary to the IRI constitution which forbids any involvement by the military institutions in the political affairs of the country, in the course of the recent elections the military forces of the Revolutionary Guard (Pasdaran), paramilitary forces of Basij, as well as intelligence forces increasingly took direct actions.
In the weeks leading to the elections, Mr. Ahamdinejad mobilized the large financial resources of his government to distribute money (from the beit-ul-maal or the public treasure) among his supporters to secure their support.
Preparation for fraud:
Crucial changes within the interior ministry were reported suggesting that the government was preparing for fraudulent practices during the forthcoming elections. On this occasion the less reliable officers were replaced with the followers of Mr. Ahamdinejad (replacement of the interior minister and appointment of Mr. Sadegh Mahsouli, a close ally of Mr. Ahamdinejad from the Revolutionary Guard).
During the campaign
Biased Media
