Iran's protests after election (2009:2010 Iranian election protests) - Research Paper Example

The names are associated with the candidates’ election colors. Another name for the events that took place is “Twitter revolution”. That name was given because protesters widely used Twitter and other social networks to communicate with each other. There were four candidates for the presidency. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a president of Iran since 2005. He appealed to the rural poor the most. His regime was very rigid and ultra-conservative. Also, he was known in the World as being very outspoken against USA superpower.

He was in favor of Iran strengthening its position as a nuclear state and was very outspoken about it. Another issue concerning him is that his regime was overspending money received from oil trade. This unwise spending caused inflation growth in the country. “Bolstered by high oil prices, the president spent heavily to consolidate his position among the urban disenfranchised and the rural population.” (Q & A: Iran's presidential election) Mohsen Rezai is a former commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps and secretary of the Expediency Council.

In his campaign he was promising to improve economics of the country. He was also an alley with the former president of Iran Akbar Rafsanjani. The other two candidates – Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi are pro-reform candidates. . Former president Mohammad Khatami's endorsement of Mousavi's candidacy is likely to boost his campaign with at least some parts of the urban youth vote… (IranTracker) Pre-election campaigns of every candidate had spread a fair amount of lie and slander about their opponents.

It was so severe that they had to be warned by the Guardian Council that if such cases will continue, the respective candidate will have the voting cancelled in some polling stations. The election took place on June 12, 2009. The four candidates for the President received this ratio: Ahmadinejad received 63.3 per cent of the vote, while Moussavi received 34.2 per cent, Razaei – 1.7 % and Karoubi – 0.9 per cent of votes. These results were not expected, according to the public opinion polls taken during the time of electoral campaigns.

There were several public opinion polls prior to elections. According to them, the first two places with very close results would be run for by President Ahmadinejad and Mr Mousavi. Also, all the polls showed great civil activity and a large number of voters participating. It was expected that many people would participate and cast their votes to prevent a very conservative President Ahmadinejad to be elected for the second term. However, the results showed that he won his opponents with overwhelming majority of votes.

After the election all three opposing candidates accused the President of fraud, corruption and stealing votes or results augmentation. Another possibility is that there was widespread fraud. Allegations regarding the election include assertions that many ballot boxes were sealed before they could be inspected by opposition candidates’ representatives…The simplest interpretation