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Habib Ahmadzadeh: Mousavi Must Say Which Ballot Boxes He Disputes
Last night, with the translation assistance of Leila Zand, director of the Iran program at the Fellowship of Reconcilation, I interviewed Habib Ahmadzadeh on the dispute over the Iranian election results from June 12. Perhaps you've heard of Habib Ahmadzadeh. He wrote the original short script for the Iranian movie Night Bus and wrote the short story "Eagle Feather," both drawing on his experiences as a soldier in the Iran-Iraq war.
Like many Iranians, including many Iranians who didn't vote for Ahmadinejad and don't support Ahmadinejad, but whose voices have been largely absent from Western media, even progressive media, Habib is deeply skeptical of opposition claims that the Presidential election on June 12 was "stolen," and has demanded that the opposition provide specific evidence of its claims.
I have been reaching out to Iranians who have or can get specific information about what happened on June 12-13. That path led me to Habib.
Although Habib lives in Tehran, his hometown is in Abadan, and he has many connections there. He thought it would be easier to get a picture of a smaller province like Abadan, as an example, than a larger province. So ahead of our interview, he reached out to people in Abadan.
Habib talked to Mousavi's campaign manager in Abadan, Seyed Reza Tabatabaie. There were 142 ballot boxes in Abadan; Mousavi had 127 observers.
Mousavi's campaign manager in Abadan said: yeah there was a big fraud. Habib asked, was your number the same as the Interior Ministry? Yeah, he said, it was almost the same. But there was a big fraud.
Habib pressed him: what was the fraud? Be specific. No, Mousavi's guy said, before the election, they gave this guy money, they gave that guy money...
I asked Habib: do we know which were the 15 ballot boxes in Abadan that Mousavi's people didn't observe?
Habib answered: this is exactly what we are pressuring Mousavi to say: specifically where, which ballot box.
Habib notes that the ballots are counted in the polling place. So if there was a representative of Mousavi -- or Karroubi -- in the polling place, that representative should have reported what the tally was in the polling place to the local Mousavi or Karroubi campaign manager. (The opposition claims their reporting system was disrupted by the government's blocking of SMS messages. But Habib says: they could call on the phone, and it's now been more than two weeks.) The government has published the ballot box tallies on the web. If the Mousavi or Karroubi campaigns would say specifically where the problem is, Habib says, we could check it against the official tally.
Habib says he is sending letters to the Mousavi people: why don't you tell us your numbers?
If, on the other hand, as has been claimed without specifics, Mousavi and Karroubi observers were excluded from observing particular polling places, we should be able to match those polling places against the official tally as well, both to observe whether the tallies in those polling places appear particularly anomalous, and whether in the aggregate any discrepancies in such polling places could have affected the result.
Habib himself voted in Tehran. I asked Habib if he saw Mousavi's representative in his polling place. Yes, Habib says -- Mousavi's representative was wearing a nametag clearly identifying him.
I asked Habib: opposition supporters are saying that the government took ballot boxes after voting without counting them in the polling place.
Which ballot boxes? Habib demanded. Again: let them say which ballot boxes they are complaining about, and let us check them against the official tally.
I asked Habib: opposition supporters are saying some ballot boxes arrived with votes already in them.
Habib pointed out, and Leila confirmed this, that this year the ballot boxes were plastic: anyone could see if they arrived with ballots already in them. Again, the question is: which ballot boxes are they complaining about?
Habib says: if we are talking about 11 million vote fraud (the gap between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi in the official tally), that needs a lot of people, even people to prepare food and shelter for all these people. How come we haven't heard about one such person?
Habib notes that he himself didn't vote for Ahmadinejad, he is just trying to get at the truth.
Habib notes that Ahmadinejad made many trips in the last four years in the small provinces. I have a friend, Habib says, who went to the provinces of Kurdistan. There were many people who don't know Mr. Khamenei, but they wanted to vote for Ahmadinejad because he came to their village. Tehran is not Iran, Habib notes.
Mousavi just appeared in public in the last two months. He was out of sight for 20 years.
Mousavi supporters say high turnout was because of Mousavi. But many poor people came out to vote in support of Ahmadinejad's attacks on Rafsanjani, Habib says.
Habib says: I spent my youth on the war front with Iraq. I was badly injured. I love my country. If I think either side is lying I would publicize it. I contacted both campaigns. I have not heard back from either one.
Habib says: My problem with Mousavi and Karroubi is that they claim fraud but they won't provide any details. My problem with Ahmadinejad is the violence afterwards. Both sides were not ready, Habib says. If Mousavi were ready he would have controlled his supporters and there would not have been riots. If the government were ready it would have controlled its forces and there would not have been police violence.
It makes me mad, Habib says, that the opposition says the government is bringing Hizbullah to beat people and the government says the Americans are doing a velvet revolution. We don't believe in ourselves. Only Lebanese can beat us up. Only Americans can do a revolution.
The most important thing right now, Habib says, is to pressure Mousavi to say specifically which ballot boxes he has a problem with.
So, let me second Habib's appeal. If the opposition or its foreign supporters have evidence that the election was "stolen," let them present it for all to see. Which ballot box do you dispute?
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From Mousavi's report, google translation, I think "fund" is ballot box
• 8 - All Votes some funds belonging to Mr. Ahmadinejad and the other three candidates do not have no assertion. For example, Fund No. 13 South Section Jbalbarz all 307 votes, in all 700 votes No. 14 Fund, Fund No. 16 in all 335 votes in Fund No. 18 and all 600 votes and all Fund No. 21 to the 1000 vote, Mr. Ahmadinejad belongs.
• 9 - This bustling ballot boxes in some other county, the total votes of three other single-digit candidate is. For example, Fund 13, 16, 20 and 30, central part of the total vote put the inbox, the other three candidates have business Total 7 votes. Bustling ballot boxes in a similar situation number 3, 4, 7, 11, 19, 22, 24 and 25 and part of South Jbalbarz Fund No. 3 is part Esmaeli View.
Have you noticed that the Guardian Council rejected the possibility of following the election disputes through legal channels, pronouncing its decision as the final word? Seems exactly like how a true winner plays, doesn't it?
Mousavi has been smart to not release his supervisors' testimonies. The fact is, out of his 40K monitors, many were denied presence during counting. If he had released the partial data he has before MOI did, they would simply make that a basis for reverse engineering and fabricating numbers for the ballots for which he doesn't have any data. MOI "updated" both their per district and per ballot box results multiple times after their initial release.
Mousvi has apparently released a 24 page report on his allegations
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/04/AR2009070402685_pf.html
Although no link to the actual document of allegations is given in the article. I tried to find it, but could notHis website seems to be shut down again. They seem to be repeats of allegations heard before the election.
"In a 24-page document posted on his Web site, Mousavi's special committee studying election fraud accused influential Ahmadinejad supporters of handing out cash bonuses and food, increasing wages, printing millions of extra ballots and other acts in the run-up to the vote.
The committee, whose members were appointed by Mousavi, said the state did everything in its power to get Ahmadinejad reelected, including using military forces and government planes to support his campaign. "
The extra ballots charge, which seems to be the most serious, was made here:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47153
The buying votes charge was also talked about in the form of potatoes here:
http://www.heritage.org/research/middleeast/wm2480.cfm
The extra ballots charge is serious - if there is a mechanism to turn the extra ballots into votes.
My understanding is that there were 41,000 Mousavi observers alone, and 45,000 ballot boxes; Karroubi also had observers.
Since the ballot box tallies were published on the web, and since the official procedure is for the ballot boxes to be inspected at the beginning of voting to verify that they are empty, and for the vote to be counted locally in the presence of observers, there is no way for extra ballots to turn into votes, except through ballot boxes that were not observed. That's why, to judge the claim that extra ballots turned into votes, you have to know whether ballot boxes were observed. That's why Mousavi should say where his observers were blocked.
In fact, the election was 'stolen' during the four years prior, during which an already very fragile and limited system of civil rights was further decimated by the current regime and replaced with what Mousavi characterizes as an 'alms' system - spending government (i.e. oil) money to buy votes, influence, etc., rather than make real investments that would address the people's legitimate needs and concerns. This is the classic corrupt third-world (and second-world) model that will ultimately result in a bankrupt country.
Meanwhile, having coercively marginalized the opposition and the press for years, the regime fully expected that the election would 'validate' their rule. In this sense, and in this sense only, Mr. Naiman's position about the actual vote count is plausible. However, if the current regime were truly confident in their 'popularity', they could easily have let the minority protests peter out of their own accord. But further protests would exposed the implicit and explicit lies they told the electorate about the economy and other social issues.
As Naiman himself points out, the losing candidates have NOT claimed to have 'won'. Instead they stress that the whole political system needs reform. This is consistent with the position that the reformers took in 2005 when they boycotted the elections. This time they decided to participate because, after years of marginalization, the elections offered the opposition the only forum available to mount a coherent, legally sanctioned challenge to the authorities.
"As Naiman himself points out, the losing candidates have NOT claimed to have 'won'. Instead they stress that the whole political system needs reform."
That is not true
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/International/story?id=7821927&page=1
Squaker is right. Mousavi did claim that he won - in fact, he declared victory before the votes were counted.
Saying that the election was "stolen" because the government gave "handouts" to the poor would not meet most Americans' notion of "stolen." In the U.S., incumbents sometimes pursue populist policies to increase their electoral prospects. This is not considered election theft. Bush, for example, supported adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare - this was widely described in the press at the time as connected to Republican electoral strategy. I don't remember any claims that this was an attempt to "steal" an election.
Our friend Habib has missed the point completely. They never counted to votes at all, but just announced "results" they had predetermined in advance. There was no recount, because there was never even a first count.
See Robert Naiman's Profile
If Habib has "missed the point," that "they never counted to votes at all," so has Mousavi's campaign manager for the province of Abadan, who didn't dispute the official count for Abadan, based on his 127 observers at 142 ballot boxes. Is Mousavi's campaign manager for the province of Abadan also part of the conspiracy to steal the election for Ahmadinejad?
You didn't answer my question.
Why must Mousavi and reformist supporters say which ballot box they dispute in order to ask for the annulment of the election? If they have evidence that show numerous violations of the systems' own election laws, before, during and after the polling process, why can"t they ask for the annulment of the election?
The logic seems clear and convincing to me and seems like to many iranians too. But not to the Gaurdian Coucil and you and those you interviewed. Apparently we have disagreement on this basic point.
"Why must Mousavi and reformist supporters say which ballot box they dispute in order to ask for the annulment of the election?"
It should be obvious.
Why doesn't our election get annulled because many republicans believe there was a conspiracy to steal the election involving ACORN and George Soros? It makes sense to hear the evidence before invalidating elections
See Robert Naiman's Profile
My response: of course they can ask for the annulment of the election if they want - no-one can stop them from doing so, even if they have no evidence of anything. Some supporters of Coleman in Minnesota wanted a revote, right? They were ignored.
My argument is this: among fair-minded people - never mind the Guardian Council, that's internal to Iran, I'm more concerned about fair-minded people in the U.S. - the claim that the election was "stolen" should not be accepted until there is meaningful evidence.
The government has published the official ballot box tallies on the web. Mousavi's campaign, reportedly, had 41,000 observers. There were 45,000 ballot boxes.
If the official tally was falsified, the opposition should be able, on the basis of its 41,000 obsevers, to point to specific ballot boxes to dispute, either because
1) the official tally does not match what the Mousavi and/or Karroubi observer saw in the ballot count at the polling place for that ballot box, or
2) the Mousavi and/or Karroubi observer was not allowed to obsever the count at the polling place corresponding to that ballot box, or
3) an obsever for the polling place corresponding to that ballot box alleges that the ballot box was stuffed prior to or during the voting, or
4) an obsever for the polling place corresponding to that ballot box alleges that he or she was prevented from observing the ballot box to verify that it was not stuffed.
See Robert Naiman's Profile
(ctd response to layla)
If Mousavi is unable or unwilling to name specific ballot boxes that he disputes, in the absence of other explanations for Mousavi's behavior, I think that suggests that he doesn't hav e evidence that there is anything wrong with the tally.
In no country in the world that I am aware of, certainly not the United States, would merely showing that an election law was violated be considered grounds for throwing out an election. You would have to show that the violations were so massive as to have altered the winner, and that no lesser remedy - like a recount - would suffice.
Also, why don't you try to contact somebody who is in Mousavi and Karoubi's camp and ask for their evidence and argument s in detail and then contrast them with the view of those who you and Mark Weisbrot have interviewed? This is something that mainstream media here has not done either. You may have more difficulty contacting them since most of them are now in prison and one by one are being forced to confess to their crimes on the state TV these days. It seems to me people whose opinion you and Mark relied on are not impartial even though they say they are not supporters of Ahmadinejhad. They seem to be too keen on preserving the Islamic republic or mindful of the US aggressive foreign policy with regard to Iran and not interested in the other side's evidence of election fraud.
See Robert Naiman's Profile
I'd be delighted to talk to anyone in Mousavi and Karoubi's camp - particularly any of Mousavi's 41,000 observers, or anyone supervising them. Do you have any contacts? You can reach me through Just Foreign Policy's website. Note in the piece above that Habib Ahmadzadeh spoke with Mousavi's campaign manager in Abadan, who supervised Mousavi's 127 observers in Abadan, and based on those 127 observers, Mousavi's campaign manager did not dispute the official count for Abadan.
This has been my experience in researching the 2009-election in Iran for the Presidency, the perversion we call US-Media is a slander and propaganda-rag.
The situation in Iran is not a comlete surprise to me, and from what I have been able to find corellates with much found in the past, that US Media essentially entertains and predominately misinforms American citizens.
I do not demean my own Christian faith by saying the Islamic Republic of Iran needs be left alone by the antiChrist leader-segment in America and elsewhere, these Iranian are an old and honorable people despite the decadent influence of Western decadence.
To give full reason and background for this statement I have assembled good reason for my position found at: http://rtpricetag.home.comcast.net/Iran0.html, it is actually 5-pages long.
Why must Mousavi and reformist supporters say which ballot box they dispute in order to ask for the annulment of the election? I can not understand this argument!
If they have evidence that show numerous violations of the iranian election laws, before, during and after the polling process, why can’t they ask for the annulment of the election (notice that Mousavi has not asked to be named the winner).
As to the evidence, they have submitted the following complaints to the Gaurdian Council and documented the evidence. Obviously you have not read it since you don't know Farsi but you can ask Leila Zand to translate it for you.
http://www.mowj.ir/ShowNews.php?7358?
See Robert Naiman's Profile
I have read Mousavi's letter to the Guardian Council - Tehran Bureau translated it. Missing from Mousavi's letter is the answer to the simple question: which ballot boxes were Mousavi's observers prevented from observing?
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