[Marxism] Fraud in Iran?

[Louis Proyect]

Although I am inclined to believe that Ahmadinejad won the election, for 
what it's worth, this exchange on PEN-L between Robert Naiman, a liberal 
supporter of Hugo Chavez, and an Iranian economist Mohammad Maijoo is 
worth considering.

Robert Naiman wrote:

 >> And, they had a plausible motivation for the Friday announcement: 
the opposition had already declared victory - before any votes were
counted at all - and was already mobilizing protests against a "stolen 
election" based on their own expectations -...<<

Not at all.

Fars news ( a pro-AN agancy) was the first press who announced the final 
result (landslide victory of AN) at  about  8 pm (in Tehran's horizon), 
  that is, two houres  before finishing the voting time, immediately 
after which IRNA ( another pro-AN agency) confirmed the news. Keyhan ( a 
fundamentalist newspaper) seemed to provide its tomorrow headline 
(again, landslide victory of AN) at about 9 pm.  After all these, 
Mousavi announced his victory and was congratulated by Khatami  for such 
victory, at about 12 pm or so. Why Mosavi did so? We didn't sleep that 
night, even for one moment, trying to cover all events as far a s 
possible. Based on the results received from several provinces in which 
the counting process had finished, Mousavi realized that he is most 
probably the great winner. Such sense, as I well remember, was 
undoubtedly confirmed by those several friends of mine who were counting 
the votes in several provinces. After these moments, we suddenly become 
unable to call our friends: their all connections instruments become 
useless (telephone, mobile, sms which had already disconnected,...). 
After this, the  state TV and several  state agencies  were bit  by bit 
  announcing  AN's  landslide victory, with a more or less fixed ratio 
of voting results from the beginning to the end. As an Iranian active 
citizen who has lived these events, I have no doubt that the votes were 
not counted at all at that night.

Anyway,  there are enough  evidences  for  the  hypothesis on a great 
fraud in the election. The lengthy report del ivered by Mousavi to the 
Guardian Council has left no doubt.! But wha t is important here is that 
the struggle is not legal but political. As it has very recently 
revealed from GC' informal sessions, even a few members of GC well aware 
of this. The question is not legal.

M. M.