IRAN : POLLS OPEN TO ELECT THE NEW PRESIDENTIranian President Mohammad Khatami has spent eight years in trying to change his country's theocratic government. Polls are now open for the people to vote their future president who is thought to be the Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a relative moderate candidate.
Rafsanjani has already served as Iranian president twice in the past but in this case, he is presenting himslef as the man who can restore old ties with US government, moreover he is willing to calm down the international pressure on Iran's nuclear program by re-entering a better welcomed energetic plan.
Even if
G.W. Bush thinks that there is not the shadow of democracy in the Iranian election,
"Iran's rulers denied more than a thousand people who put themselves forward as candidates, including popular reformers and women who have done so much for the cause of freedom and democracy in Iran," said the American president,
Hamid Reza Assefi, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, did not agree with Mr. Bush,
[Bush's]"declarations are based on hostility and animosity" [towards Iran] and [Washington] "should hardly be worrying about democracy because its main allies are dictatorships," said Assefi.
al-Jazeera
Il Romanaccio at 11:52 AM
