Ein Referendum über das Regime? (5)
Der amerikanische Kolumnist Michael Ledeen hat in einem dankenswerten Artikel verschiedene Quellen aufgelistet, aus denen klar hervorgeht, dass die tatsächliche Wahlbeteiligung weit unterhalb dessen liegt, was die Mullahs behaupten. Wie schamlos gefälscht wird, belegt diese Geschichte, die einer gewissen Komik nicht entbehrt:
The lowest participation — maybe as low as 3-5 percent — was in Khuzestan Province, where there had been bombings and protests in recent weeks. But anecdotal evidence from all over the country indicated a very low turnout, as of late afternoon. Despite this, the mullahs trotted out rosy reports of big voter turnouts, and even broadcast “live” TV coverage of voters queued up, waiting patiently to make their voices heard.
The only problem was that the pictures were from past elections. One woman called up a Tehran radio station to say that she was sitting at home watching the tube, and saw herself voting. Very droll indeed.
Lässt sich die tatsächliche Wahlbeteiligung hochrechnen? Ledeen kommt zu folgender Schlussfolgerung:
As best I can tell, the real numbers are quite different from the official ones. Roughly seven million people voted under normal circumstances, between the opening bell and the official closing time. But there were approximately 29 million ballots, a difference of 22 million. Of these, about five million were produced by the late evening roundups (bringing the total of actual voters to twelve million), and the balance — 17 million — were fraudulent, mostly blank ballots filled out by the representatives of one candidate or another. This out of an eligible pool of about 51 million …
Die iranische “Blogosphäre” jedenfalls hat ein waches Auge auf die Wahllokale.
[...] d eines Besseren belehrt. Die Indifferenz der Menschen gegenüber den jüngsten Wahlen hat deutlich gemacht, wie gross die Resignation ist [...]