| Submit your comments on this article |
| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Candidates have no proof of vote violation |
| 2009-06-29 |
| [Iran Press TV Latest] The head of Iran's electoral office, Kamran Daneshjou, has criticized the complaints filed by the defeated presidential candidates for being "too general". In an expansive speech on Sunday, Daneshjou addressed the candidates who had complained about the ejection of their representatives, and asked for the details of the districts. He touched on many issues raised by the opposition candidates, including the question of the number of ballots printed and the shortage of ballots at a number of stations. Daneshjou said that there was no truth in having extra ballots printed in the day before the election. But, on the day of the election 2 million ballots were printed, in addition to the 60,875,000 that had been printed earlier. His remarks came as Iranian officials continue their efforts to clarify some of the issues raised by Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohsen Rezaei -- the defeated presidential hopefuls. Following a hotly-contested campaign, Iranians cast their votes on June 12 in unprecedented numbers. However, when the Interior Ministry announced the official results indicating an almost 2-to-1 for President Ahmadinejad win over his closest rival, Mousavi, the three opposition candidates cried foul and large numbers of their supporters took to the streets in protests. More than 600 alleged "irregularities" have been lodged with the electoral watchdog, the Guardian Council, and the country's political establishment has been trying to probe into the allegations through lawful channels. Coming to the accusations that some of the ballot boxes had already been stuffed with votes before the start of the election, and that the absence of the candidates' representatives made it impossible to rule this out, Daneshjou said that 14 individuals had signed off each ballot box, each with a different tendency, and they testify to the boxes being empty. He also blamed the candidates' representatives for arriving too late at the polling stations and consequently finding it impossible to observe the emptiness of the boxes. He said that charges of ballot-rigging are an insult to the 600,000 who took part in the election administration. Daneshjou claimed that some of the opposition candidates' real gripe was that the election watchdog, the Guardian Council, had not disqualified the incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from running for a second term. "They do not have the audacity to say this openly, and instead begin to find excuses to nitpick against the execution of the election," he added. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 "I didn't do it, nobody saw me, you can't prove a thing!" |
| Posted by: mojo 2009-06-29 15:12 |