Iran holds presidential elections

PanARMENIAN.Net - Iran holds presidential elections today, 12 June 2009.



It is the 10th presidential election to be held in the country. If no candidate receives a majority of support, a run-off election will be held 19 June 2009. The current incumbent is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Iranian reform movement has attempted to unite behind a single candidate. Former President Mohammad Khatami had been the leading opponent to Ahmadinejad until he left the race and endorsed former Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Former Speaker of the Majlis Mehdi Karroubi, another Reformist, is also running, as is former Commander of Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Mohsen Rezaei, a Conservative.



The President is elected by direct vote. Candidates need to win majority (half plus one of the votes cast in the election) to become President. Iran has a two-round system: if none of the candidates win the majority in the first round, two top candidates from the first round will go to a second round, and whichever wins the majority of votes in the second round is elected President. The first round will be held on 12 June 2009, and the second round, if necessary, will be held one week later, on 19 June 2009. All Iranian citizens of age 18 are eligible to vote. The Iranian Center for Statistics and Iranian Ministry of Interior have stated that there are around 46 million eligible voters.



Even though there are four candidates, the real contest is between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the conservative incumbent, and reformist candidate Hassan Moussavi whose green-coloured rallies gave a new and popular dimension to the campaigning that ended on Wednesday.

 

None of the four candidates - the other two being former speaker Mehdi Karroubi and former general Mohsen Rezaei - is likely to get more than 50 per cent of the vote, thus forcing a run-off.



Former President Mohammad Khatami quit the presidential race in March but he boosted Moussavi's chances by throwing his weight behind him. The reformists seem to have learnt their lesson, for in the 2005 election their boycott of the polls helped Ahmadinejad. This time bands of 'green' throughout the country are urging young people to cast their votes to swing the election in Moussavi's favor.



A new public opinion survey of Iranians shows that incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the leading candidate, VOA News said.

 

The telephone survey of about 1,000 Iranians, commissioned last month by two Washington-based public policy institutes - Terror Free Tomorrow and the New America Foundation - found that 34 percent of those surveyed plan to vote for President Ahmadinejad.  



His main rival, reformist former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, was favored by 14 percent of the respondents. Twenty-seven percent of those surveyed said they are undecided.