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Iran rivals attract huge crowds

— Photo: AP

Breaking new ground: Zahra Rahnavard, wife of presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, waves to people during a rally in Tehran on Tuesday.

TEHRAN: Iran is in the grip of a high election fever with massive crowds turning out in the streets ahead of Friday’s presidential elections.

If incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad mustered huge crowds at a Tehran rally on Wednesday, his chief opponent Mir-Hossein Mousavi managed to draw around a million of his supporters into the streets on the same day. Mr. Mousavi’s backers, sporting green head bands, formed a human chain that stretched several kilometres towards north Tehran.

Observers say the politically charged atmosphere and the crowds in the past few days can be compared to the crowds that choked Tehran’s streets during the days of Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.

Mr. Mousavi has the backing of the former reformist President, Mohammad Khatami, and his supporters. Analysts say all sections of Iran’s 46-million-strong electorate appear to have been mobilised ahead of the polls.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s supporters say he has become the victim of a conspiracy hatched by the country’s rich and powerful who fear his radical economic reforms and foreign policy agenda.

During a live presidential debate with Mr. Mousavi held recently, Mr. Ahmadinejad blamed the former President, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who had lost the presidency to him in 2005, as the mastermind behind the heavy mobilisation against him.

Mr. Rafsanjani has also been accused of networking with powerful sections of the clergy, business, financial and bureaucratic elite against Mr. Ahmadinejad’s “people’s power”.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s support is mainly among the country’s poor and lower middle classes.

The President has spent considerable energy on consolidating his support base by introducing micro-credit schemes and taking measures to ensure that the poor have a chance to buy “justice shares” in privatised companies.

The President enjoys sizeable support among the country’s 10 million Basij forces. The Basij consists of young people who are engaged in a variety activities ranging from forcibly breaking anti-regime agitations to laying water pipes in villages.

By mobilising millions, often by resorting to the use of SMS messages and working the Internet, Mr. Mousavi is posing Mr. Ahmadinejad a stiff challenge. Mr. Mousavi has the ability to reach out effectively to the urbanised elite, middle classes and the burgeoning student community.

Analysts say he is a credible leader, mainly because as a Prime Minister in the eighties he handled the economy effectively during the painful years of the Iran-Iraq war. Mr. Mousavi has also gone the extra mile to mobilise women voters.

For the first time in an Iranian election, the presidential candidate’s wife, Zahra Rahnavard, campaigned hard to draw women to polling booths.

Mr. Mousavi’s chances of causing an upset would improve if there is a high voter turnout in urban areas.

Traditionally, voting in the rural areas, where Mr. Ahmadinejad is popular, has been higher than in the urban areas. As voters gear up for Fridays elections, a tight race for the Iranian presidency is in the offing.

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