TEHRAN, 25 June 2005 — Hard-line Tehran Mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad held a clear lead in early results from Iran’s presidential election runoff against veteran cleric Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, election officials said today. “Ahmadinejad is well ahead and it seems he is the winner,” an Interior Ministry official said.
A source close to the Guardian Council, which must approve the election results, said that with 3.6 million votes counted, Ahmadinejad had 61.0 percent of votes cast.
Iran has 47 million eligible voters and 29.3 million people voted in an inconclusive first round presidential vote on June 17.
The country’s first-ever runoff vote decided between sharply differing visions for the future of Iran and its relations with the West. But for many Iranians, it came down to a choice over what weighs more heavily on their minds: The fate of reform or Iran’s shattered economy.
“The real nuclear bomb that Iran has is its unemployed young people,” said Ali Pourassad, who voted for Ahmadinejad yesterday.
“If nothing is done to create jobs for our young people we will have an explosion on the streets,” Pourassad said as he left a polling station set up in the courtyard of a mosque in the middle-class south of Tehran.
Ahmadinejad, the 47-year-old mayor of Tehran and former Republican Guard commander, has presented himself as a champion of the poor in a country where unemployment is likely as high as 30 percent, while vowing to reclaim the values of the 1979 Revolution.
That stance has sent liberals and business leaders rushing into the arms of his opponent, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, an insider of Iran’s theocracy.
After several extensions, polling stations were told at 11 p.m. to accept the last of the voters and start counting.
Aides to both candidates said they were “optimistic” of winning.
Rafsanjani acknowledged the race was “very close” when he cast his vote in an affluent quarter of Tehran.
“Rafsanjani is ahead of Ahmadinejad in most regions. The more people vote, the better it is for us. We are optimistic,” close Rafsanjani aide Gholamhossein Karbaschi said before the nail-biting count commenced.
One of Ahmadinejad’s aides, Khosro Daneshjoo, said: “We feel that he will win with a large margin.” The influential hard-line Kayhan paper went to press with the headline “Ahmadinejad’s Remarkable Victory” before voting even ended.
In a repeat of the allegations of election fraud that marred Ahmadinejad’s shock second place in the first round, the reformist-run Interior Ministry complained of serious irregularities and said even its observers were being arrested.
However, the all-powerful Guardian Council dismissed the complaints and vetoed any move to halt the elections.
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei insisted the vote had been “totally healthy”. Analysts believe his overwhelming powers could be challenged by a Rafsanjani victory.
The unprecedented runoff was forced after the June 17 election saw none of the original seven contenders win a majority. In the first round, Rafsanjani won 21 percent of the vote against Ahmadinejad’s 19.5 percent.
