Ahmadinejad’s Rival Insists on Access to Booths in Landmark Elections

The closest rival of President Ahmadinejad in the ongoing landmark elections of Iran has expressed doubts of elections being rigged as he complained that some of his supporters were not let in the polling booths.

Mir Hossein Mousavi, a former prime minister who is Ahmadinejad’s closest rival, asked the officials to allow his representatives to have full access to the vote as voters lined up to cast their ballots at the country’s 45,000 polling stations.

“Presently they have prevented some of our representatives from being present at polling stations and they do not let us monitor (the vote),” he said. “We expect that officials would solve this problem as soon as possible.”

Yesterday, the liberal cleric Mehdi Karoubi and Mohsen Rezaie
, a former Revolutionary Guard leader, who are Ahmadinejad’s opponents in the election appealed yesterday to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Iranian Supreme Leader, to ensure there is no vote rigging.

Mousavi’s allies went a step ahead in their charge and claimed that Ahmadinejad could win only by cheating. They warned that this could triggerk riots and chaos on the streets. One political analyst said that he feared a “Tiananmen Square-style experience”, with the military moving in to crush any protests.

Authorities expect a record-turn out keeping in view of the extraordinary campaign featuring vast rallies and dancing in the streets of Tehran and televised debates that more closely resemble Western elections  than the scripted campaigns in most other Middle Eastern countries.

It should be noted that until a fortnight ago, Ahmadinejad’s re-election looked like a formality, but the campaign has come alive as urban middle-class Iranians began to rally behind Mousavi and his campaign embraced the potential of the internet.

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