The weasel wins, apparently

Rico says it sounds all too much like a recent American presidential election, but this one is in Iran, according to the article by Thomas Erdbrink and William Branigin in The New York Times:

Iran's election commissioner declared Saturday that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won a decisive victory in most of the country's electoral districts in Friday's presidential election, but the incumbent's leading challenger protested the results, charging widespread vote fraud and vowing to resist a "dangerous manipulation" of the balloting. Mir Hossein Mousavi, a former prime minister who waged a heated campaign against Ahmadinejad's bid for reelection, urged his supporters to reject a "governance of lie and dictatorship. I'm warning that I won't surrender to this manipulation," Mousavi said in a statement posted on his website Saturday. He said the announced results were "shaking the pillars of the Islamic Republic of Iran's sacred system" and represented "treason to the votes of the people." He warned that the public would not "respect those who take power through fraud."
Mousavi made the comments after Iran's election chief, Kamran Daneshjoo, said on state television that Ahmadinejad received nearly 21.8 million votes, or more than 63 percent, of the nearly 34.4 million valid votes cast in 346 of Iran's 366 electoral districts. He said Mousavi received 11.7 million votes, or 34 percent. However, officials delayed without explanation an expected announcement of the complete results, which news agencies said suggested intervention by Iran's Islamic authorities to tamp down a potentially volatile situation. Riot police cordoned off the Interior Ministry, which directed Friday's voting, and stood guard around key government buildings. Plainclothes officers fired tear gas to disperse a cheering crowd outside Mousavi's campaign headquarters after the pivotal presidential election ended in confusion, with both sides claiming victory.
With votes still being counted in many cities, Ahmadinejad, 52, a hard-liner who has antagonized the West, was leading by a 2-to-1 ratio in early returns, according to Iranian Interior Ministry officials. But supporters of Mousavi, 67, a relative moderate, dismissed those numbers, saying the ministry was effectively under Ahmadinejad's control.
"I am the winner of these elections," Mousavi declared late Friday, after heavy turnout resulted in a two-hour extension of voting across the Islamic republic. "The people have voted for me." When Mousavi's youthful supporters gathered after midnight outside his Tehran headquarters to celebrate his claim to victory, officers quickly dispersed them with tear gas, said Milad Afsarzadeh, a Mousavi campaign official inside the building. He and other witnesses to the brief melee said it was unclear whether the officers were police or members of the baseej, a paramilitary force of volunteers organized by the Revolutionary Guard Corps and greatly feared by student demonstrators. The witnesses said it was also unclear whether the plainclothes officers were taking sides in the election or enforcing rules against street demonstrations to try to prevent clashes between impassioned backers of Mousavi and Ahmadinejad. No serious violence was reported.
The election has stirred deep political passions among Iran's 46 million eligible voters, pitting Ahmadinejad, a populist who promised to help the poor and to make Iran a world power, against three challengers. Under Iran's system, if no candidate wins a clear majority, a runoff is be held between the two top vote-getters.
Though the final say over Iran's foreign and domestic policies rests with its unelected supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Mousavi portrayed himself as the candidate for change, pledging to take a less confrontational tone in relations with the West and to provide more technocratic management of the economy. His campaign produced an outpouring of enthusiasm from youth, intellectuals and an older generation of Iranian leaders, while Ahmadinejad drew his core support from rural and working-class voters, plus elements of the military and conservative Islamic clergy.
Ahmadinejad, who has been president since 2005, did not make a statement immediately after the polls closed, but his supporters pointed to the Interior Ministry's official tally to claim victory. Mousavi's supporters charged that officials were trying to steal the election and cut off alternative sources of information. For several hours during the balloting Friday, they said, international telephone lines to Tehran were down and text messaging— which Mousavi's supporters had used to organize street rallies— was blocked. Members of the baseej reportedly seized a building in North Tehran that housed several websites supporting Mousavi, which were shut down.
A senior aide to another opposition candidate, Mehdi Karroubi, charged that the Interior Ministry was distorting the early vote count by providing results from the countryside and not Iran's cities. "We believe these results are void and not acceptable," said the aide, Morteza Alviri. Mousavi, meanwhile, issued a written statement thanking the "dear people of Iran" for his victory. "I would like to inform you that in spite of wide-ranging fraud and problem-making, according to the documents and reports we have received, the majority of your votes have been cast in favor of your servant," the statement said. It concluded with a veiled suggestion of a possible confrontation, calling his supporters into the streets to celebrate his victory Saturday night and warning that if the votes are not fairly counted, "I will use all legal facilities and methods to restore the rights of the Iranian people."
The Interior Ministry, which is overseeing the election and counting the votes, is headed by Sadegh Mahsouli, a staunch supporter of Ahmadinejad. But its results must be confirmed by the Guardian Council, a panel of senior Islamic clergymen led by Khamenei, the supreme leader. Khamenei and Mousavi, who was prime minister from 1981 to 1989, are members of an older generation of Iranian revolutionaries who overthrew the shah thirty years ago.
Mousavi's statement and late-night news conference claiming victory capped a day of long lines at polling places across the capital, from the affluent neighborhoods in the north of the city to the working-class areas in the south. "We haven't voted in ten years' time," said Giti Ghioshfar, who was waiting with her husband to cast ballots for Mousavi near Tehran's Fatemi Square. "We are here because we want more freedom," she said.
In Shahr-e Rey, south of Tehran, voter Ali Badiri said that young women without head scarves had been dancing in the streets over Mousavi's candidacy. "I'll vote for Ahmadinejad because, if Mousavi wins, they will be dancing naked next week," he said.
"We don't want to change Iran," said Abdollah Khalili, another Ahmadinejad voter. "We want this system to remain the way it is."