TEHRAN: His admirers hail him as Iran’s Robin Hood, his critics a religious extremist. But on Saturday Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became the president-elect of Iran, basking in an electoral landslide few had foreseen.
Government figures showed more than 17 million votes for Ahmadinejad, 49, the blacksmith’s son who has been mayor of Tehran since 2003, compared with around 10 million for Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president and favourite throughout the campaign who had gained the reluctant backing of the beleaguered reformist movement.
Charges of vote-rigging and other violations, which marred his surprise second-place showing in the election’s first round and resurfaced during Friday’s runoff, began to fade as Iranians absorbed a political earthquake that promises a re-assertion of Islamic values in Iran and a return to confrontation with the West.
The demise of Rafsanjani is a blow to many western diplomats. His senior advisers are believed to have held pre-election talks with British embassy officials in Tehran as part of plans for greater rapprochement with the West.
The result will increase western concerns about Iran’s nuclear programme. Ahmadinejad has described nuclear technology as the ‘demand of the whole Iranian nation’ and accused the country’s negotiators of being ‘frightened’ during talks with their EU counterparts.
After eight years of cautious liberalization under Mohammed Khatami, Iranians now face an era of austere leadership. Ahmadinejad is supported by the basij , a volunteer grassroots militia that acts as a vigilante force ensuring religious laws are observed.
Reformers have labelled his rise as a ‘militarist coup’, but it was clear yesterday that his pledge to help Iran’s poor and crack down on rampant corruption had resonated with many. During the campaign, he vowed to ‘cut the hands off the mafias’ he says are in charge of the country’s oil industry and redistribute the revenues.
Equally important was the active support of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — the real centre of power in the Islamic republic. That resulted in a mass vote mobilization exercise spearheaded by basij leaders from mosques across the country.
“Ahmadinejad’s vote comes from two sections of the electorate,” one Tehran-based analyst said. “The first are genuine hard-core religious voters who rallied behind him when they realized that certain people were supporting him in the Revolutionary Guards.
“The second part belonged to the forces of tradition. These are people who have difficulties coping with the changes in society. They want somebody who appears modest and honest.”
It all amounts to a meteoric rise for a man whose name does not even appear in the most recent edition of Iran’s political Who’s Who. Born the fourth of seven children in Garmsar, 60 miles south of Tehran, Ahmadinejad moved to the capital with his family as a child.
While the Shah was still on the throne, he took a BSc in civil engineering at Tehran’s University of Science and Industry, a religiously devout institution. His credentials were honed while serving with the Revolutionary Guards during the eight-year war with Iraq during the 1980s.
He became governor of the north-western province of Ardebil in the 1990s, but was still a political novice when elected mayor of Tehran. In that role, he used his PhD in traffic and transportation engineering to bring order to the city’s chaotic road network. He lived in a modest house, in contrast to the conspicuous lifestyles enjoyed by other senior regime figures.
But the mostly secular better-off fear his presidency may herald a clampdown on already limited social freedoms, such as the mingling of the sexes.
Ahmadinejad has dismissed such concerns, saying: “The country’s true problem is employment and housing.”
His campaign advisers insist Khatami’s modest reforms will not be reversed and that private behaviour will not be regulated.— Dawn/The Observer News Service
