THE clerics disqualified the candidates, but they could not disqualify the people. So long were the queues outside many polling stations that Iran’s election commission postponed closing five times. Secular Iranians with pink hairdos stood in line waiting to vote against the mullahs. When a self-important hardline politician tried to queue-jump, they booed him to the back of the line.
In Jamaran, the Tehran district where Ayatollah Khomeini once berated western Satans, citizens cheered the architects of Iran’s overtures to the West as they came to vote. Muhammad Zarif, the foreign minister who negotiated the nuclear deal, got polite applause. A former president, Muhammad Khatami, who is perhaps Iran’s most popular politician despite being banned from state media, won a hero’s cheer.
By contrast, the turnout in south Tehran, a poorer, more conservative place, seemed dismal. Voters queued for hours in the north, but registered their ballots in the south within minutes. Organisers in the mosques which doubled as polling stations tried to rally their flock. They pinned posters in their porticos mocking America’s president, Barack Obama,...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/1Sl4jlR
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