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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (12665)	12/19/2006 3:30:47 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 218197

Moderates deliver bloody nose to Iran's hardline president in polls embarrassing blow to the hard-line government of the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, by shunning his allies in municipal and clerical elections. ELMAT: The people has spoken!! Denmocracy at work here!! Moderates deliver bloody nose to Iran's hardline president in polls MICHAEL THEODOULOU IRANIAN voters have delivered an embarrassing blow to the hard-line government of the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, by shunning his allies in municipal and clerical elections. According to early results, the main winners were moderate conservatives, while reformists have made a morale-boosting comeback after three major electoral defeats in the past three years. Friday's twin elections were the first test of Mr Ahmadinejad's popularity since he won a presidential landslide 16 months ago. The message was seen as a clear call for him to moderate his policies at home and abroad. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a pragmatic former president, trounced Mr Ahmadinejad's fundamentalist mentor in the Tehran vote for the Assembly of Experts, a key clerical panel empowered to appoint the country's next supreme leader. It was a remarkable reversal of fortune for Mr Rafsanjani, a regime stalwart who supports accommodation with the West but was beaten in last year's presidential elections. With most of the results for local elections announced throughout Iran, the president's allies have failed to win control of any council. In Tehran, where 20 per cent of the votes had been counted by last night, Mr Ahmadinejad's supporters were in a minority, having captured no more than four of the capital's 15 seats. The remainder was shared by moderate conservative candidates opposed to the president and reformist candidates, who claimed Mr Ahmadinejad had suffered a "decisive defeat" because of his government's "authoritarian and inefficient methods". Mr Ahmadinejad's government put a brave face on the setback by portraying the higher-than-expected turnout as a vote of confidence in Iran's Islamic system. But the president's critics saw the high participation, about 60 per cent, as a shift in the popular mood towards more moderate policies abroad and as a sign of displeasure with his inflationary economic and socially conservative policies at home. They argue that Mr Ahmadinejad's international defiance is a means of distracting from his domestic failures: he has yet to deliver campaign promises to give the poor a fairer share of Iran's oil wealth while he has alienated others by stifling social and political freedoms