Turnout, worries seen keys in Iran vote

KASHAN, Iran -- In the storied bazaar and historic streets of this small city in central Iran, crews daily paste up glossy, full-color campaign posters of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, only to have them defaced overnight.

Individual peddlers and shopkeepers give smaller, monochrome posters of his rival, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (pronounced ah-MAHDI-ne-JAD), places of honor in their stalls and windows.

Rafsanjani, 70, a conservative cleric, two-time former president and quintessential Iranian insider, and Ahmadinejad, 49, mayor of Tehran, Muslim fundamentalist, and outsider, face each other today in the first runoff election for president in the 26-year history of this Islamic republic.

Rafsanjani pulled in just 21 percent of the vote in balloting a week ago but led the field of seven candidates. He is presenting himself as strong and experienced enough to improve Iran's stagnant economy and ease its tense relations with the West. Ahmadinejad, who stunned pollsters and analysts by finishing second with 19 percent of the vote in the first round, promises to eliminate the widening gap between the elite and ordinary people.

Ahmadinejad's mayoralty brought a tightening of controls on personal freedom that had been expanding gradually during the eight-year tenure of the outgoing president, Mohammad Khatami. Reformist leaders fear that the stringent rules on personal behavior and dress that prevailed for 15 years following the 1979 Islamic revolution could be reinstated in an Ahmadinejad presidency.

They are trying to rally liberal and reformists voters to Rafsanjani to block the Tehran mayor, but many supporters of the reformist cause dislike the two finalists equally. Some cite an Iranian proverb to explain why they will not vote today: The red dog, they say, is brother to the jackal.

The preliminary victories of Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad knocked from contention all liberal and reformist candidates who had sought to continue Khatami's reform drive. Conservatives already are in firm control of the Iranian parliament because reformers and liberals were barred by the ruling Islamic clerics from running in the last parliamentary elections.

Despite much popular antipathy for Rafsanjani, the establishment and leading reformists organizations have closed ranks behind him over the past week.

Etemad, a major reformist paper, Wednesday ran a large color photo of Rafsanjani with Khatami at the top of its front page, though officially Khatami has not endorsed a candidate. Mustafa Moein, the unsuccessful liberal-reformist in the race, endorsed Rafsanjani, as did Hassan Rowhani, a leading figure in Iran because of his role as Iran's chief nuclear negotiator.

But on the streets and in the seminaries of the holy city of Qom, in the capital, Tehran, in Kashan, and elsewhere, popular sentiment seems stronger for Ahmadinejad.

The election appears to hinge on two factors -- turnout, and which candidate convinces Iranian voters he is better able to relieve their mounting worries about the economy and the future of the nation's youth. Nearly two-thirds of Iran's 70 million people are under 30.

''Rafsanjani is just so . . . so old," said a Qom hotel clerk in his 20s after watching an hourlong presentation by the Rafsanjani campaign on national television. The clerk, who said he was not particularly religious, said he would vote for Ahmadinejad because he is younger and less distant from the public, not because he is a fundamentalist.

Differences in the candidates' personalities and in their appeals to voters were sharply apparent in the way each used the block of free national television time they were given in the closing days of the campaign. Rafsanjani's presentation was Madison-avenue slick, Ahmadinejad's rough and occasionally amateurish.

That may not work against the Tehran mayor. Ahmadinejad's campaign film was replete with shots of the candidate plunging into masses of citizens, listening to their complaints and commiserating with them. Rafsanjani's film portrayed him as cool and presidential, but he looked old and distant in comparison to Ahmadinejad.

Ahmadinejad closed his campaign by criticizing Iran's elite for living and working in palaces; Rafsanjani answered with a last-minute proposal offering every Iranian family a chance to buy at reduced prices more than $11,000 worth of shares in state companies he said he intends to privatize.

''Mr. Rafsanjani has the power, expertise and experience of making this plan come true and has accepted its risk," Hossein Abdoh-Tabrizi, head of the Tehran stock exchange, told Reuters news agency.

Amir Mohebian, a conservative analyst who is political editor of the daily newspaper Resalat, said last week's balloting shows Rafsanjani has a substantially greater potential vote than Ahmadinejad, but everything depends on whether moderate conservatives and reformers will turn out in numbers large enough to overcome the smaller, but more intensely committed voters who are nostalgic for the early days of the Islamic revolution.

''If the turnout is 16 million or less, Ahmadinejad wins," Mohebian said. ''If it is 19 or 20 million, Mr. Hashemi Rafsanjani wins." Anything in between is a tossup, he said. More than 29 million Iranians cast ballots last week, but, Mohebian said, ''people will not turn out for Rafsanjani," who drew the lowest turnout in Iranian presidential-election history in his 1993 reelection campaign.

''The best thing for him now is to suggest to people, 'If you are afraid of Mr. Ahmadinejad, come to Mr. Rafsanjani,' " the analyst said.

If a trio of female students emerging from the North Tehran Art Cultural Center one afternoon this week are any indication, Rafsanjani could be in trouble. All voted for Khatami four years ago. None of them voted in the first round this year because they did not like any of the candidates.

Only one said she intended to vote today.

''Between bad and worse, we have to choose the bad," said Sogol Jourablou, 21. ''The situation is such now that we are obligated to vote or things could get much worse."

''Everyone has her own opinion," rejoined her friend Maryam Tavakolirad, 22. ''I feel that we have to experience the worst so that things can get much better."

Charles A. Radin can be reached at radin@globe.com