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Unverifed ballot counts for the Iran election have been reported on Iranian blogs and websites, in spite of Iranian government claims that incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the election with a 2-1 margin, according to a UK Telegraph report:
The statistics, circulated on Iranian blogs and websites, claimed Mr Mousavi had won 19.1 million votes while Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won only 5.7 million.
The two other candidates, reformist Mehdi Karoubi and hardliner Mohsen Rezai, won 13.4 million and 3.7 million respectively. The authenticity of the leaked figures could not be confirmed.
Mr Mousavi has accused Iran’s government of “fraud” after Mr Ahmadinejad was declared on Saturday to have 62.6 per cent of the vote, making him the landslide winner. The capital has been rocked by disturbances for the last three days.
The UK Guardian also reported today that at least one Iranian protestor has been shot by live ammunition armed militias as more than 100,000 Iranians defied a march ban:
Shots have been fired at an opposition rally in Tehran where more than 100,000 Iranians were protesting against the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
An Associated Press photographer saw one person killed when shots were fired from a compound for pro-government militiamen. Several other people appeared to have been seriously wounded in Tehran’s Azadi Square. BBC’s Persian service quoted an eyewitness saying that four protesters have been killed.
A reporter on Iran’s English-language Press TV said: “There has been sporadic shooting out there … I can see people running here.”
Speaking live on the air, he said: “A number of people who are armed … I don’t know exactly who they are, but they have started to fire on people, causing havoc in Azadi Square.”
Local residents said they had heard shooting in three districts of northern Tehran.
Earlier, the defeated candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi addressed the crowd in his first public appearance since Friday’s disputed election. Addressing the crowd from the roof of his car, Mousavi said he was ready to compete in a fresh election.”The vote of the people is more important than Mousavi or any other person,” he said, according to al-Jazeera television.
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If the leadership in Iran had only handed their news media over to Rupert Murdoch, creating an Iranian version of Faux Noose, maybe none of this would have happened.
But then again, the Iranians just might be far too wise to fall for such blatant propaganda.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/…
and tweaking totals. And a (highly unlikely) recount is doomed due to the widespread accounts (tweets from last 36 hrs), of ballot destruction.
A re-vote is the only way to an authoritative determination. Sadly I just don’t see that happening. But WTF do I know. Look at those people in the streets! Maybe, just maybe, They Can Make it Happen.