TEHRAN, 22 June 2005 — Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani told Iranian students yesterday he would champion reforms that could be threatened by the hard-line policies of his surprise rival in a run-off presidential election.
Friday’s run-off, after an inconclusive first round election, pits Rafsanjani against ultraconservative Tehran Mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who swept up votes among the poor and religiously conservative by playing on his humble background.
The outcome of the race, which analysts have said is unpredictable, will probably shape how Iran tackles future ties with the United States and a nuclear stand-off with the West.
Analysts say a hard-line presidency could end fragile reforms started under outgoing President Mohammad Khatami and remove a moderating influence in decision-making in Iran, where ultimate power lies with unelected supreme leader Ali Khamenei.
Rafsanjani, 70, pre-election favorite, ran a lackluster first round campaign with no big rallies and relying on his high profile as a former president and holder of other top posts.
“I believe that I was the prime mover in establishing reforms, and Khatami’s government took further steps. Definitely it should go on,” Rafsanjani, who was president from 1989 to 1997, told 4,000 students at a rally in Tehran University. Rafsanjani, at the center of Iranian politics since the 1979 Revolution, has rebranded himself a reformer and pledged to extend social freedoms.
“We should put aside backwardness and extremism,” he told the students some carrying banners, one of which read “Confront authoritarianism, we vote for Hashemi (Rafsanjani)”.
Reformists have rallied around Rafsanjani, but analysts say such support may not be enough to derail Ahmadinejad, who would be the first president who was not a cleric since 1981. “I will vote Rafsanjani, because it is a choice between bad and worse,” Samira Ayyubi, a 23-year-old student said.
Rafsanjani also headed to poor south Tehran where Ahmadinejad swept up votes. Ahmadinejad, 48, shunned the slick Western-style campaign of rivals in the first round and instead cast himself as attending the needs of the elderly, poor and war-wounded, while rebuffing wealthy opportunists trying to circumvent the law for a profit.
The two rivals only have until early tomorrow when campaigning ends 24 hours before polling stations open. Reformists complained of vote rigging in last Friday’s first round vote and have accused Ahmadinejad of mobilizing a block of voters from the Basij, a paramilitary body which sees itself as the guardian of Islamic revolutionary principles.
A spokesman for the reformist-held Interior Ministry said no irregularities in the ballots were found but said it was aware of “the role of certain organizations in mobilizing the votes”.
“Those who acted against the law in the first round, might try to do it again in the second round because of their strong will and we will try our best to prevent them,” he said, the student news agency ISNA reported.
