With votes counted from over 37 thousand voting centers, the official results of Iran’s presidential election have been announced. Incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won over 63 percent of the votes, Iran’s semi-official ISNA news agency reported.
Reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi received 33 percent of the votes. The other two candidates, liberal cleric Mehdi Karoubi and former Revolutionary Guard leader Mohsen Rezai, received only a small fraction.
Over 30 million of 46 million eligible voters cast their ballots in the election.
Mousavi, who has been endorsed by the country’s students and middle-class, has accused the election organizers of violations and claimed himself as the winner.
“I consider myself the definite winner of this election,” Mousavi told reporters in a news conference as the election results were still being counted with Ahmadinejad already announced to be leading with a large margin.
Mousavi said his aides overseeing the election on his behalf were forced out of many voting centers and, despite what the media has reported about some voting centers extending the voting time so everyone had the chance to participate, some voting centers were closed early, leaving some voters locked out. Some centers did not have enough ballot papers, too, he said.
