MODERATE CLERIC HASSAN Rowhani, bolstered by a late surge in support from suppressed Iranian reformists, was leading the race today to succeed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president, initial election results showed.
With 36.6 percent of polling stations counted, Rowhani had 50 percent of the vote, more than three times as many as his nearest rival, conservative Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf on 15 percent, said the interior ministry.
Under Iranian law, the first-round winner must clear a threshold of 50 percent plus one vote to avoid a run-off against the second-placed candidate. The second round would be staged on June 21.
Voting
More than 50.5 million Iranians were eligible to vote to find a successor to Ahmadinejad, who after serving two consecutive terms was constitutionally barred from standing for office again.
And voters reportedly turned out in massive numbers for yesterday’s election, with Rowhani benefitting from the withdrawal this week of the only reformist candidate Mohammad Reza Aref.
Aref, a former first vice president, pulled out of the race on Tuesday at the urging of former reformist president Mohammad Khatami, who then threw his weight behind the 64-year-old moderate cleric.
Rowhani, who has vowed to mend ties with the international community, garnered nearly 6,049,655 votes from 12,091,699 ballots counted by 12pm local time said the interior ministry.
In 2003, during his tenure as Iran’s top nuclear negotiator under Khatami, the Islamic republic agreed to suspend its controversial enrichment of uranium. It was restarted two years later after Ahmadinejad became president.
Iran has been at loggerheads with world powers over its nuclear drive, which the West suspects is aimed at developing atomic weapons. The stand-off has resulted in the imposition of harsh economic sanctions and Tehran’s international isolation.
High inflation
While campaigning, Rowhani promised to move to ease those sanctions, which have led to severe economic pain in the country.
Inflation is raging at more than 30 percent, the Iranian currency, the rial, has lost nearly 70 percent of its value, and unemployment is rising.
The economy has been at the centre of voters’ worries.
“We expect the new president to improve the economy so that it gets better and better,” said Farshid Hassan Zade, a Tehran resident.
On the votes counted so far, Rowhani is followed by Qalibaf; ex-commander of the Revolutionary Guards Mohsen Rezai with 12.5 percent; top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili with 11.5 percent. All three hail from conservative camps.
Jalili, Qalibaf and ex-former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati, a candidate with only six percent of the votes so far, are all considered close to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Rowhani, who boasts of close relations with moderate ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, also touts his relation with Khamenei, who has final decision on all key state issues, including the nuclear programme.
Rowhani is a representative of Khamenei in the Supreme National Security Council, Iran’s top security body, where he also served as its secretary for 16 years until 2005.
Accuracy over speed
In the run-up to Ahmadinejad’s disputed 2009 re-election, official election results were quickly released. But in this campaign, counting has been time consuming.
Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said today his electoral staff would not “compromise accuracy for speed”.
Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, the spokesman for the Guardians Council electoral watchdog, said “no violation” had been reported whatsoever.
Ali Yousefi, a Tehran resident, said after voting: “I think that there was a great level of participation in this election which shows that people will show up when they should and turn everything to their favour.”
Ahmadinejad’s 2009 re-election sparked massive anti-regime street protests after his opponents and two reformist candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi alleged wide-scale voting fraud.
Those protests, stifled by a brutal regime crackdown, led to the eventual detention under house arrest of Mousavi and Karroubi, and a widespread suppression of reformists.
Social networking
Rowhani’s surge in the campaign came after Khatami publicly endorsed him, asking all his supporters to vote for the moderate candidate.
Khatami’s endorsement also gave birth to an online movement, with social networkers urging abstentionists not to waste their votes this time around.
“I will vote for Rowhani, even though I do not know him at all and did not want to vote until yesterday,” a man named Ali said on Facebook.
“I will vote because the consensus of those wanting to save Iran is on Rowhani.”
Other Internet users adopted as their profile picture Rowhani’s official colour — purple — and his symbol of a key to open the door to solutions for Iran’s problems.
- © AFP 2013.
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