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LinkedinDiggFacebookMixxMySpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalinkBy ROBERT F. WORTH
Published: June 13, 2009
TEHRAN — The Iranian government declared an outright election victory for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Saturday morning, and riot police officers fought with supporters of the opposition candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, who insisted that the election had been stolen.
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Ben Curtis/Associated Press
Supporters of the opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi protested the results of the Iranian presidential election in Tehran on Saturday. More Photos »
Multimedia
Slide Show
Iranian Protesters Fill Streets After Election Result
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Times Topics: Iran
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Ebrahim Norouzi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images, left; Newsha Tavakolian, via Polaris, for The New York Times
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, left, and Mir Hussein Moussavi. More Photos >
After a mostly quiet morning in Tehran, Moussavi supporters began filtering onto the streets. By early afternoon, thousands had come together, many of them wearing the trademark green of his campaign, chanting angrily that they would fight on as Mr. Moussavi had urged them to do on Friday night when he claimed that he had won and that there had been voting “irregularities.”
“I am the absolute winner of the election by a very large margin,” Mr. Moussavi said during a news conference with reporters just after 11 p.m. Friday, adding: “It is our duty to defend people’s votes. There is no turning back.”
A statement posted on Mr. Moussavi’s Web site on Saturday morning urged his supporters to resist a "governance of lie and dictatorship," according to The Associated Press.
But the Iranian authorities, already on alert, moved quickly to head off any concerted street demonstrations. Thousands of police officers could be seen moving into central Tehran, wielding riot batons and charging straight into the biggest concentrations of protesters. It was unclear whether there were any serious injuries.
In recent days, Mr. Moussavi’s supporters were predicting a wide victory, citing voter surveys. And Mr. Ahmadinejad, the hard-line incumbent, had appeared on the defensive, hurling extraordinary accusations at some of the Islamic republic’s founding figures.
Iran’s Interior Ministry said Saturday that final results gave Mr. Ahmadinejad 62.6 percent of the vote, with Mr. Moussavi receiving 33.7 percent. The ministry says turnout was a record 85 percent of eligible voters.
Though there was no word of Mr. Moussavi’s whereabouts on Saturday, statements on his Web site made clear that he was contesting the official line.
"I’m warning that I won’t surrender to this manipulation," he said, adding that the election outcome “is nothing but shaking the pillars of the Islamic Republic of Iran sacred system and governance of lie and dictatorship."
He warned "people won’t respect those who take power through fraud" and said the decision to declare Mr. Ahmadinejad the winner was a "treason to the votes of the people."
The conflicting claims, coming after an extraordinary campaign that saw vast street demonstrations and vitriolic televised debates, seemed to undermine the public legitimacy of the vote and to threaten unrest.
The emotional campaign was widely seen as a referendum on Mr. Ahmadinejad’s divisive policies. It pitted Mr. Moussavi, a former prime minister who has pledged to move Iran away from confrontation with the West, combat economic stagnation and expand women’s rights, against Mr. Ahmadinejad’s economic populism, social conservatism, and hard-line foreign policy.
Many women, young people, intellectuals and members of the moderate clerical establishment backed Mr. Moussavi. Mr. Ahmadinejad drew passionate support from poor rural Iranians as well as conservatives.
At his news conference, Mr. Moussavi cited irregularities that included a shortage of ballots. He accused the government of shutting down Web sites, newspapers and text messaging services throughout the country, crippling the opposition’s ability to communicate during the voting.
Fraud has been a prominent concern for Mr. Moussavi’s campaign, with many of his allies warning that Mr. Ahmadinejad could use the levers of state — the military, the Revolutionary Guard, and the Basij militia — to cajole or intimidate voters, or even engage in outright fraud. In 2005, Mr. Karroubi, who is also a candidate in this election, accused the Basij of rigging the vote in Mr. Ahmadinejad’s favor.
At his news conference, Mr. Moussavi called on the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to help the country reach a “favorable conclusion.”
Ayatollah Khamenei, who has final authority over affairs of state, appears to be the only figure who could mediate between the two camps in the event of an open confrontation over the legitimacy of the vote. But it is not clear how much he knows about the crisis, or what role he might play.
Mr. Khamenei met on Friday with Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a cleric, former president and backer of Mr. Moussavi’s who had warned the supreme leader in an unusual open letter on Tuesday about the possibility of election fraud, according to a political analyst who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the gravity of the situation.
While casting his ballot earlier in the day Friday, Ayatollah Khamenei had said that people were using texting to spread rumors, but it is unclear if that is why the services were shut down.
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Past Coverage
NEWS ANALYSIS; As Iran Votes, Talk of a Sea Change (June 12, 2009)
In Iran Race, Ex-Leader Works to Oust President (June 11, 2009)
As Iran Gets Ready to Vote, Economy Dominates (June 10, 2009)
In Iran, Harsh Talk as Election Nears (June 8, 2009)
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