Hassan Rowhani, a member of Iran’s powerful Expediency Council and the Experts Assembly recently said that to ensure the integrity of the 2009 presidential elections in Iran, “monitoring cameras could be installed in voting areas and vote-counting stations, and political party observers and candidates could watch the vote-counting through monitors, thus monitoring the whole process.”
Rowhani, who during Khatami’s administration was Iran’s chief negotiator in the country’s international nuclear talks, was speaking to a group of political activists in the province of Golestan when he raised this possibility as a complimentary and confidence building measure regarding voting issues in Iran and said these were in addition to the state allowing observers from all candidates and parties to monitor the vote-counting process.
Without mentioning the scandalous incident last week when during the voting in the Majlis for a new Minister of Interior a number of “yes” votes were openly put in the voting boxes - despite the running cameras in the chamber - which in fact changed the outcome of the vote for the minister, Rowhani said this was a plausible mechanism to prevent fraud in elections. In last week’s blatant fraudulent vote in favor of Mahsuli, if at least two Majlis representatives, which included a deputy Majlis Speaker, had not thrown in “yes” votes in the basket, there is no way President Ahmadinejad’s close friend would have been confirmed as the new Minister of Interior with just a “half a vote.”
Even if we disregard all the past fraud committed in the country’s presidential, Majlis and provincial council elections, the fraudulent voting last week in the Majlis that confirmed Mahsuli as the new minister of interior cannot be glossed over. Because this event demonstrated that Ahmadinejad’s administration does not even care when its fraud is caught on camera.
One must accept that solutions to elections fraud cannot lie in mechanisms that have proved to have failed. New mechanisms are needed. Now is the time to proclaim – without fear of accusations by the conservatists - that an internationally proven mechanism has to be tried: elections under the supervision of the UN and international monitors.
Such a mechanism is not harmful to the country’s independence or sovereignty. The Islamic regime has not only officially accepted such a mechanism, but has even sent its own representative to different countries to monitor the elections there and monitor the vote-counting in other countries.
So the question that comes up now is how come the regime approves of Iranian monitors to be present in the election of other countries and calls this legal and justified, but at the same time calls the presence of monitors from other countries in Iran to be interference in Iran’s domestic affairs and a violation of its sovereignty? In addition, if Iranian officials claim that they do not engage in fraud, then why these elections should not be held under the purview of international monitors and world public opinion?
So it would be appropriate if individuals such as Hassan Rowhani who on one hand have been involved in high-level foreign policy and national security issues of Iran, while at the same time are not accused of treason or espionage, and while being a potential presidential candidate himself, support international monitoring of Iran’s elections, rather than supporting mechanisms that are known to be ineffective, as a way to ensure that the elections are held with full integrity and public’s trust is safeguarded.
