| |
TEHRAN : Iran's electoral watchdog said on Tuesday it is ready to recount the presidential ballots if it finds irregularities in the disputed election which returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power.
"If the Guardians Council reaches the conclusion that such offences as buying votes or using fake identity cards have been committed... it will order a recount," its spokesman Abbas Ali Kadkhodai told the state news agency IRNA.
The hardline Ahmadinejad was declared the winner in Friday's vote with 63 per cent compared with 34 per cent for his nearest rival, the more moderate Mir Hossein Mousavi.
Mousavi, who was seen to have mounted a strong challenge to Ahmadinejad, has complained that the vote was rigged and along with the two other defeated candidates Mehbi Karroubi and Mohsen Rezai lodged protests with the council.
Kadkhodai said the recount will be done in the presence of representatives of the defeated candidates.
"The Guardians Council will decide on the cancellation of a specific ballot box or a (polling) station, only if the offence changes the fate of the votes and the election," he said.
Ahmadinejad won a massive 24.5 million votes against 13.2 million for Mousavi, according to the results issued on Saturday.
Rezai, the former head of the elite Revolutionary Guards, came third with 678,240 votes or 1.73 per cent, while reformist ex-parliament speaker Karroubi trailed with 333,635 votes or 0.85 per cent.
Interior Minister Sadeq Mahsouli said 39.1 million votes were cast, representing a turnout of 85 per cent across Iran.
On Monday, state television said Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had asked the council to probe the allegations of irregularities raised by Mousavi, who had declared himself the winner on polling day.
Former reformist president Mohammad Khatami's clerical group has called for a new presidential vote altogether.
The Combatant Clerics' Assembly, made up of reformist and moderate clerics, expressed concern at a "massive engineering of votes" in the election.
"The assembly concludes that annulling this election and repeating the vote in a fairer and more logical atmosphere is the right way to retrieve public trust and sustain the national reconciliation with voting," it said.
In Iran's complex political system comprising elected and un-elected institutions, the 12-member Guardians Council screens candidates wishing to stand in presidential or parliamentary elections.
Six members are clerics appointed by supreme leader Khamenei, while the other six are jurists named by the head of the judiciary, who is also selected by the supreme leader, and approved by parliament.
Khamenei has told Mousavi to pursue his complaints over the election through legal means and settle the issue calmly, according to state television.
"In previous rounds, some people followed matters through the Guardians Council as it is the legal reference body in these issues and such matters should naturally be pursued legally in this round," he told Mousavi. - AFP/ms
bur/hc/txw
|
