Date:26/06/2005 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2005/06/26/stories/2005062605741200.htm

International

Hardliner elected Iran President

Atul Aneja

Ayatollah Khamenei describes the polls as a "profound humiliation" for the U.S.

— PHOTO: AP

DEFYING PROJECTIONS: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (right), who was elected Iranian President, with Speaker of Parliament Gholamali Haddad Adel in Teheran on Saturday.

MANAMA: Former Teheran Mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been elected Iran's President, capping a process that has already resulted in a new generation of radical Iranian leaders taking over Parliament and several local bodies.

Iran's Interior Ministry declared Mr. Ahmadinejad as the winner in the ninth presidential elections after he registered a landslide victory against veteran politician and cleric Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in the run-off polls held on Friday.

Iranian state television reported that Mr. Ahmadinejad had won 62 per cent of the 27.9 million votes cast, defying pre-election forecasts of a tight race. The turnout for the polls was around 60 per cent, a three per cent drop from polling in the first round on June 17.

Call for unity

In a radio broadcast soon after he was named winner, Mr. Ahmadinejad called for unity, but did no make any policy remarks. "Today is a day when we have to forget all our rivalries and turn them into friendships." Iran, he said was "one nation and one big family. We should help each other to make a great society."

Mr. Ahmadinejad's election to the Presidency marks the growing influence of a new generation of young radicals who emerged as a cohesive unit during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war in the eighties. The new President is part of the Abadgaran group that swept Parliament in the February 2004 polls, after establishing its hold over the Teheran municipal council. The group chose Mr. Ahmadinejad as the Teheran Mayor in April 2003. Mr. Ahmadinejad is also close to the powerful Islamic Revolution Devotees' Society, as well as the Islamic Revolutionary Guards — the elite troops which he joined in 1986.

Mr. Ahmadinejad is believed to have polled heavily among the rural and urban poor. During his campaign he had proposed the creation of an employment fund made of one per cent of the state budget — a move that targeted the underprivileged youth. One of his representatives in a television programme equated the wealthy post-revolutionary leaders to the 1,000 families of aristocrats that ruled Iran during the days of the monarchy.

Poll fraud denied

Analysts point out that Mr. Rafsanjani's campaign ppealed mostly to the young urban elite. The clerical support base was also not unified behind him, as the influential seminary in Qom failed in late May to endorse his candidature. "Mr. Rafsanjani has been known commodity for years and his attempt to reinvent himself as a moderniser in step with the youth was simply not convincing", Amir Ali Nourbakhsh, an Iranian political analyst told The Hindu.

Meanwhile, the Guardian Council, which ran the poll, has dismissed allegations of election fraud, after the Interior Ministry said it had received a spate of complaints of voting irregularities. Mr. Ahmadinejad will assume office in August and will be Iran's first non-cleric President in 24 years. Iran's supreme spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei banned street celebrations and described the election as a "profound humiliation" for the United States.