IRAN: A COUP THROUGH ELECTION, SOUNDS FAMILIAR?

Folks, when I read the BBC Reports on Election Cheating I am reminded of something familiar:

Despite a record turnout across the country on polling day:

1. Monitors from their campaign teams, who by law are allowed to oversee every polling station, were issued with invalid ID cards or refused entry;

2. And there was a 10-fold increase in the number of mobile polling stations - ballot boxes transported from place to place by agents of the interior ministry, which is run by a close ally of Mr Ahmadinejad.

"One third of the ballot boxes were mobile," says Mehdi Khalaji, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

"They were out of the control of the local authorities and the representatives of the candidates, and nobody knows what they have done to them".

3. "Early on polling day, the SMS network was shut down, that made me worried about what was going to happen," says Tehran journalist Ali Pahlavan.

With little access to the state-controlled broadcast media, Mr Mousavi's largely young, technically savvy supporters use text messages to campaign.

4. "Then the interior ministry [where results from polling stations around the country are collated] started kicking out its own employees so that just a skeleton personnel and the top officials were left," says Mr Pahlavan.

5. Despite the high turnout, the count was remarkably quick, and the results unusually consistent, with none of the typical variations between different regions and cities.

6. "Iran is a huge country, nearly four times the size of France and they began announcing the results within four hours, in past elections it's taken 24. It just seems to me the fix was in," says Juan Cole, Professor of Middle Eastern History at the University of Michigan.

7. For example, in Mr Mousavi's home province of East Azerbaijan, which is known to have fierce regional and ethnic loyalties to the reformist candidate, he polled far worse than expected.

8. And the liberal cleric Mehdi Karroubi polled 5% in Lorestan, despite having won 55% there in the first round of voting in 2005 when he also stood as a candidate.

"This is something more than a manipulated election, this is a coup".

What is happening in Iran now is a kind of dress rehearsal for our 2010 elections. We are now seeing how the election process was rigged and how the Iranian state is reacting to the protests. So our moves have to consider pre-election, during election, and post-election activities. We have to brace ourselves for the long haul.