If you read one of my earlier articles (To vote or not to vote) you would have figured out that I would vote, and so I did like approximately 42 million iranians (as statistics would tell you). When casting my vote I heared a group of political activists outside that shouted slogans against IRI. They were not part of the MKO because I saw them earlier, they were in front of the Iraqi embassy like every day these days trying to convince the Iraqi government not to throw out their sisters and brothers from Camp Ashraf.
The mood in the Embassy was light and there were much more participants than I expected. The procedure was straight forward, fill in the full name and code of the participant as they were written on the wall. So we did and turned back to work and then back home to follow the elections on BBC Persian. Although I heard later that these codes were not given out so that they could be counted as bad votes or counted as Ahmaghi votes.
Following the elections when seeing the numbers I was struck by the numbers TV showed us.. 67% Ahmaghinejad, I thought how could they give percents so soon, and so high for Ahmaghi? Ok that he was a big contester and favorite in many places but as you know in elections usually even when you have 2 contestants it is very unlikely that someone would win with 67% let alone he starts the election with that number. Now we have 4 contestants so the votes have to be even more split.
As the night continues I witnessed that the percentage for Ahmaghi reduced by 1% to 66%. I was sleepy so I went to bed. The day after I woke up 7 hours later and the percentage was exactly the same as when I went to bed. Some hours later the counting finished with Ahmaghi winning with 66%.
Now I really hated myself for voting. I was thinking this asshole could cheat so openly and Khamenei OKed it and all of us are just a bunch of idiots to go and vote.
But now, this thing happened. People started to question the result and public ran amok on the Tehran streets. How could Ahmaghi be beaten badly and forced to this fraud so openly if the peoples turnout was not so high? And as a bonus the ugly face of IRI was shown thanks to the high turnout on the ballot boxes.People in Iran made me proud. They stood up for their vote. I will do so too.
So now I am pleased that I voted, and I will again do so.
