After a week of huge rigging and electoral fraud and quadrupling the vote tallies, the authorities are thus acknowledging that 43 percent of the people in Tehran shunned the mullahs' elections. A day after the elections, Interior Minister Moussavi Lari announced that 85 percent of the electorate had participated in the elections.
Tehran newspapers have been reporting extensively on rigging and vote fixing in different parts of the country. The daily Sobh-e Emrouz wrote on Saturday: "News of electoral fraud and rigging are widespread and being told and retold every day. History will remember them in its fluid memory." Another daily, Fat'h, wrote: "News and reports from the election headquarters in the Interior Ministry and the Second Khordad Front speak of widespread rigging to prevent the fall of Hashemi and to keep him in the thirtieth slot."
The low turnout in Tehran comes despite the fact that because of the heavy presence of suppressive agencies, state establishments, government offices and semi-official institutions in Tehran, this constituency should have the highest percentage of turnout relative to other regions in the country. In the 1997 presidential elections, official statistics claimed that 92 percent of the electorate had cast their votes in Tehran.
The Mojahedin Command inside Iran announced previously that on the basis of its first-hand reports from thousands of polling stations across the country, the turnout in the Majlis elections on February 18 was only 17 percent.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
February 27, 2000
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