| Submit your comments on this article |
| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Ahmadinejad Leads in Iran Runoff Vote |
| 2005-06-25 |
| Hard-line Tehran Mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad held a clear lead in early results from Iranâs presidential election runoff against veteran cleric Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, election officials said today. âAhmadinejad is well ahead and it seems he is the winner,â 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 countryâs 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 Iranâs shattered economy. âThe real nuclear bomb that Iran has is its unemployed young people,â said Ali Pourassad, who voted for Ahmadinejad yesterday. âIf nothing is done to create jobs for our young people we will have an explosion on the streets,â 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 Iranâs 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 âoptimisticâ of winning. |
| Posted by:Fred |