Election day in Iran today. Good luck, Mr. Mousavi.
Update 6/13/09: Big Orange writer/Young Turk Cenk Uygur explains why A-Train's "victory" doesn't pass the smell test. Clifflyon, also at Kos, posts some digests from Farsi websites, essentially telling us that Mousavi's supporters are out burninating, Mousavi may or may not be under house arrest, and some ayatollahs are calling for a new election because this one got so effed up. It's a mess over there. Honestly, Big Orange is doing as good a job as anyone covering this.
Update 6/15/09: More from Big Orange. This guy's reporting all the rumors flying around about what's going on over there, but there isn't a whole lot of corroboration because there isn't a whole lot of information coming out of Iran right at the moment. Twitterati can follow the rumor mill as it develops by searching for #IranElection. There are significant reports that Khameini has called for an investigation, an about-face which seems to lend credence to the idea that Rafsanjani was making noise about removing him...
Update 6/16/09: Mike comments with a Post article that links to this poll that showed a hefty A-Train lead going into the poll. Problem is, though, the poll also predicted that no one was going to reach 50% and that a runoff was imminent. So a narrow A-Train victory would have been credible, but 63% still strains credulity. Also, the poll said 77% favor increased democracy (such as directly electing the Supreme Leader) and the same proportion favor increased relations with the US. So it's unlikely A-Train gets a landslide despite that, even if he is an economic populist. It's possible, but not probable, and I still think the most probable outcome is that the vote tally was fudged a bit.
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2 comments:
When the results first started coming out Friday, I remarked that I couldn't decide which scared me more: a) the results were manufactured, meaning not only do the people of Iran still not have any power, but that the people who are actually in power want Mahmoud to remain in office; or b) the results were manufactured, meaning the seemingly good news that Iran is moving closer to a legitimate democracy is actually bad news because it means the people actually want Mahmoud to remain president. I'm still not sure. But at least the article you link to suggests that at least my theory is accurate about which of the options is true.
Curious what you think about this. I haven't been following that closely, but their claims contradict most of what I've heard about the pre-election polling.
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