-- The lines extended into the street at times, voters waiting to pick their choice to succeed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Some 70% of some 50
million registered voters -- men and women, young and old -- turned out
according to state broadcaster Press TV, to pick a man who'll deal with
high-stakes challenges domestically and internationally.
And now the results are starting to trickle in.
Based on two sets of
still very early results, centrist candidate Hassan Rouhani had more
votes than any other candidate, Interior Ministry officials said early
Saturday.
As of about 7:15 a.m.
Saturday (10:45 p.m. ET Friday), Rouhani had 834,859 votes; Mohammad
Bagher Ghalibaf had 320,562; Saeed Jalili had 257,822; Mohsen Rezaei had
214,368; Ali-Akbar Velayati had 106,144; and Mohammad Gharazi had
25,324.
Even counted
cumulatively, these votes represented a small fraction of the total
vote. If the 70% turnout figure is correct, there would be about 35
million votes; the early results reflect about 1.76 million.
When the final tally does
come in, that doesn't necessarily mean the election is over. If no
single candidate gets more than half the vote, the top two finishers
will face off in a runoff next Friday, June 21.
That victor will take
Ahmadinejad's mantle as one of the most visible figures, at a time it's
dealing with widespread sanctions tied to international anger over its
nuclear program.
But he won't be Iran's
most powerful man: That distinction belongs to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
who has been Iran's supreme leader since 1989. He's got plenty of
backing, from conservative citizens to paramilitary to, most notably of
all, the Revolutionary Guard.
"Whoever is president,
he's going to have his hands relatively tied by the Revolutionary Guard
if they don't really like what he's doing," said Alireza Nader, a policy
analyst at the Rand Corporation think tank.
Centrist candidate complained of irregularities
This reality of Iranian
governance, though, didn't prevent 680 men and women from officially
seeking the office. The Guardian Council -- a non-elected body made up
of six clerics and six lawyers operating under the oversight of the
supreme leader -- narrowed that group down to eight. Two others
subsequently dropped out.
The final six contenders
don't include any women. Nor do they include Ahmadinejad's aide and
protege Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, who was among those excluded by the
Guardian Council.
Velayati, Ghalibaf and
Jalili, who is Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, are considered close to
Khamenei and would be unlikely to challenge his authority. Of the three,
Jalili has seen the most popular support going into the vote.
Rouhani, meanwhile, has the backing of the highly influential former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
Hours into the voting,
Rouhani had complained of a voting irregularity. A reform candidate,
Mohammed Aref, who dropped out of the race earlier in the week, is still
on some ballots.
Rouhani is worried that
voters may mistakenly select Aref, which would amount to a vote thrown
away. It was not clear how many ballot papers were concerned.Iran's semi-official Mehr News reported via Twitter that voting lines
got longer in the afternoon, and that there were insufficient voting
slips in some polling stations.
2009 chaos
Images of bleeding and
dying Iranians flickered across social media four years ago after
allegations of election fraud sparked protests and clashes. Police and
the Basij, a feared paramilitary group, cracked down on the protests.
Protesters were jailed,
and human rights groups alleged many were tortured and killed behind
bars while the government quashed the uprising.
Reform politicians
representing the movement, including Ahmadinejad's election rival,
former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Moussavi, have remained under house
arrest.
Despite the unrest, Ahmadinejad's re-election was formally certified by the clerical establishment.
Since his reelection,
conservative politicians close to the supreme leader have assailed
Ahmadinejad for being too liberal, and he has often been at odds with
Khamenei.
Some of Ahmadinejad's associates have faced heavy repression, and hardliners attempted to link the president to the largest embezzlement case in the country's history.
Ahead of the vote this
time round, campaigning was more muted although Khamenei's office
repeated his call to the ballot boxes Friday with posts on social
networking site Twitter.
"I humbly expect from
our nation to participate all in #IranElection & do this as soon as
possible," the supreme leader's post said.
Voting is not mandatory
in Iran, but there are major incentives to push people to the polls. An
active voter has a better shot at promotions in the workplace and
preference when it comes to collecting social welfare benefits.
This can be vital in an economy that is chronically weighed down by international sanctions over nuclear concerns.
Khamenei also tweeted a jab at the United States, which has often led the charge to tighten those sanctions.
"I have heard that #USpoliticians said they don't recognize #IranianElection. Hell with their recognition!" he said.
Clampdown on dissent?
Rights group Amnesty
International said this week that it was "concerned by evidence that the
Iranian authorities are intensifying their clampdown on dissent" in the
run-up to the vote.
"Those targeted include
political activists, journalists and other media workers, trade
unionists, advocates of greater rights for Iran's religious and ethnic
minorities, students and others. In many cases, the full reasons for
arrest and detention are not known; in others, those arrested have been
brought before the courts on sweeping but vaguely worded charges,
convicted and sentenced to prison terms," it said.
The head of language
services for BBC World Service, Liliane Landor, also complained Thursday
of "unacceptable harassment" of its staff and other independent
journalists in Iran.
"The BBC is very
concerned by the unprecedented levels of intimidation being suffered by
families of BBC Persian Service staff living in Iran in the final days
of the presidential election campaign," she said.
"The harassment has
included threats that relatives will lose jobs and pensions and be
prevented from traveling abroad. For the first time the lives of BBC
Persian TV staff living in the UK have also been threatened."
Iran's Minister of
Culture and Islamic Guidance, Mohammad Hosseini, said more than 2,000
local reporters and 450 foreign journalists were covering the election
in Iran.
The head of the Foreign
Reporters Bureau within the ministry, Alireza Shirvani, said the number
of foreign reporters covering the presidential election had increased by
about 15% compared with four years ago.
