In Zanjan (northwestern Iran), the authorities have issued several directives and have placed all the Guards and Bassij forces on full alert, forbidding them to leave their centers and garrisons until the end of the elections. In Mashad and Arak the regime has deployed patrol units and set up street check points to intimidate the public and disperse any gathering.
Despite the atmosphere of terror, people have defaced and destroyed many election billboards and posters. By writing slogans on the walls and distributing leaflets in score of cities, including Tehran, Shiraz, Isfahan, Zanjan, Arak, Kashan, Zahedan, Ahwaz, Bushehr, Najafabad, and Fassa, the resistance forces, have called on the people not to vote. Previously, on January 10, Mr. Massoud Rajavi, President of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, had called on the Iranian people to boycott the elections.
In fear of a full fledged boycott, the mullahs' regime has resorted to different ploys to force the people to go to the polling stations. In Tehran, Mashad, Isfahan, Najafabad and Arak, the regime's agents have been purchasing people's birth certificates to use them on election day in several voting stations. By threatening not to distribute coupons for the most basic staples in some areas and distributing coupons for some scarce commodities in other areas, the clerics are attempting to coerce people to vote on election day.
Meanwhile, amidst intensified feuding among various internal factions of the regime, a number of candidates, including Moghaddesian and Arani, were ordered arrested in Tehran by the Interior Minister.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran - Paris March 6, 1996
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