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Khatami Wins Mock Presidential Election in Iran
Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, who is poised to seek a second term next May, has won a mock presidential election held in Tehran University, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported Wednesday, December 6.
A total of 400 students participated in the simulated election, held at the university's Faculty of Law on Tuesday, and the results showed that Khatami won 199 votes, much more than the two other imagined candidates.
The results indicated that President Khatami will probably have no serious problem in winning next year's real presidential election, the report said.
The Islamic Association of Students, organizer of the mock election, chose former Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati and nationalist dissident Ezzatollah Sahabi as challengers of Khatami.
The three candidates were said to represent the three dominant political tendencies in Iran - Khatami representing reformers inside the ruling system trying to carry out reforms within the framework of the Constitution, Sahabi as the representative of reformers outside the system, while Velayati a conservative representative in the ruling group.
The results showed that Sahabi, a member of the opposition Freedom Movement, won 142 votes next to Khatami, while Velayati got only 46 votes. Thirteen students cast invalid votes in the ballot box.
The report said some students criticized the association to field Sahabi as a candidate. Sahabi's group is outlawed but tolerated by the government.
Khatami, the initiator of the country's reformist movement, won a landslide victory in the 1997 presidential elections. So far the conservative camp has not announced any influential figure to challenge him in the eighth presidential election next May.
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