The figure announced by Mojahedin's Command HQ inside Iran is on the basis of on-site reports from thousands of polling stations throughout the country. These observations have been recorded one by one during different hours of the day and will soon be pu blished. Sources within the Interior Ministry and other official organs confirm this figure.
Last night, 48 hours after the voting ended, the clerical regime's Interior Ministry announced that close to 25 million had taken part in the elections. Similar to previous occasions, the regime's leaders agreed to exaggerate the vote tally four to five times in order to "protect the state's credibility."
In the Assembly of Experts elections last October, they claimed 17.8 people had voted, whereas the actual figure was four million. During the Presidential elections in May 1997, the number of voters was put at 29 million, although the real figure was 6.5 million. Other reports point to widespread rigging in polling stations in Tehran and other provinces. A large number of the regime's operatives voted several times without birth certificates or used such documents as driver's license. During the voting period, man y boxes already stuffed with fraudulent ballots were brought into the polling stations.
In Tehran, the number of those who cast their ballots was less than 900,000, or 11.4% of the eligible voters.
So extensive was the boycott in some provinces such as the southern Fars province that despite all the rigging, the figure announced by the regime was only one-third of the eligible voters.
Commenting on the propaganda blitz by Khatami's faction which is trying to portray the "Islamic councils'" elections as a milestone and a major victory, Mr. Massoud Rajavi, President of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, said: In this way, they a re trying to compensate for Khatami's defeat in the Assembly of Experts elections, whitewash the recent political killings and overshadow the popular uprisings in different cities across the country.
As far as the Iranian people and the suppression and murder of those striving for freedom are concerned, despite falsifying the figures and astronomical rigging, nothing has changed, nor will it change until the overthrow of the clerical regime. On the ot her hand, the effects of a fatal schism and split at the top of the regime are becoming more apparent in every step of the way, Mr. Rajavi added.
The NCR President underscored that in the power struggle and attacks and counter attacks while the regime has entered its final phase of overthrow, any advances or retreats by the warring factions has no meaning other than further unraveling of the cleric al regime in its totality which engulfs it in a deadly contention.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
March 1, 1999
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