Talk:2009 Iranian presidential election

Ineligible to run

"Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad's main political rival, is ineligible to run in 2009 as he will be over 75."

Do we have a citation for this? Chapter IX section 1 of the Iranian Constitution does not mention any age restrictions. Do we have a citation for the applicable Iranian federal law on this? Is this covered by the law or is address by Article 99 in the Constitution? Throckmorton Guildersleeve (talk) 23:56, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

yea blad —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.96.118.214 (talk) 09:24, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Top and content need to be updated for Khatami's withdrawal from the race.

According to these [1] [2], Khatami has or will soon withdraw from the race in favour of Mir Hossein Mousavi.Vonschlesien (talk) 18:07, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Spelling inconsistencies

I realize that there may be differences in Romanization of Iranian names, but there is a candidate spelled "Mohsen Rezaei" (in the article text) and "Mohsen Rezaee" (in the graphic). I don't know enough to say which is preferable, but there should be consistency. Grassfire (talk) 05:00, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Article is a major joke / pre-election poll section

Poll section states that: "Mir-Hossein Mousavi would take 52% of Iranian workers' votes in the election, defeating Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with 36% and Mehdi Karroubi with 8%"

Workers can't defeat because they are not the only one that are voting. As of Today, all major polls suggest Ahmadinejad leading in the polls.[3] Even reformist own survey by Karoubi's camp admit this![4]

The fact that you don't like it does not mean you should fabricate your own version of reality.

--Visitingcause (talk) 18:19, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm not an expert on Iran, but Visitingcause seems to be making a valid point. Is there any reason why we are citing [5] but not [6] or [7]?

Nycrdeary (talk) 16:09, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

i think i've got most of these into the table. None of these polls have sufficient detail to be anywhere near a level of "verifiability" by people living in Iran - e.g. judging the validity of the basic method (demographic profile + statistical analysis), the independence or dependence of the polling institute, concrete polling method (people in street, random fixed telephone numbers, random mobile telephone numbers, sufficient spread across demographic groups by age/sex/ethnicity/wealth/city-vs-country/etc.), though a few do give a few details. Boud (talk) 22:13, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

old text version, replaced by table

i've replaced the following text that contains original research - making generalisations way beyond just summarising (who considers the polls to be "not unbiased"? who decides which polls should be taken with skepticism? why isn't "government" indicated as the organisation that organised a poll called "other"?), without any references - by a table. For convenience, in case anyone is worried, the text i removed is here: Boud (talk) 21:44, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

The polls in Iran are not considered unbiased and results depend heavily on the polling organization. For example, according to a poll conducted in late March 2009, Mir-Hossein Mousavi would take 52% of Iranian workers' votes in the election, defeating Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with 36% and Mehdi Karroubi with 8%. Reformist polls like this which state that Mousavi is front runner are taken between groups more leaned toward reformists and should be considered with skepticism. In an other poll by reformists in Tehran (which is one of the least conservative cities) Mousavi got 43.54% of the vote, while Ahmadinejad got some 41.26%. Other polls show that Ahmadinejad has more votes than Mousavi and Karroubi have together.

I have put that sentence. I think it is obvious from the variance in the results that the polls are not reliable. I would suggest you to take a look at sites like PEW's website people-press.org and pollster.com to understand how a poll should be reported to be considered reliable. I have also added a reference about this to a letter by a number of reformists including Abbas Abdi. 128.100.5.138 (talk) 00:38, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

• If it's obvious from the variance in the table that at least some of the polls are unreliable, then isn't it enough to let the reader decide what is "obvious" him/herself? Otherwise, we're not adding any useful information.

IMHO, adding this text helps the reader. Anyone comparing the polls can see the variance but I am not sure how many of readers would do that. Also noting that the polling organizations are not stated nor the methodology is helpful to understand the difference of these polls compared to much more respected polls in developed countries. 128.100.5.135 (talk) 22:06, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

• i'm quite aware that a poll report that does not state anything at all about the method, does not identify the organization, and does not even state how many people were interviewed, is quite unscientific in the sense that it's impossible to reproduce or refute (except to some degree by making other polls). That's why there are columns for these things in the table. To the limited degree to which various organizations/political groups/government wish to make claims of polls, let them at least give out key information so that other people can judge their possible validity. The polls carried out in N number of cities presumably interviewed a bunch (10?) people in each city, giving at least some minimum hint as to what the reliability might be. This sort of presentation also allows the reader to judge the vagueness of the reports quite concretely. This in itself is useful information.

Someone reading the table would in my opinion regard these information as extra information, not missing required information from the report. As there most (if not all) of referenced poll are missing these key information, I think that this should be explicitly told. 128.100.5.135 (talk) 22:06, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

• i'll presume that fluent Persian wikipedians can check the usefulness of the reference, in the absence of a decent English language reference. Boud (talk) 14:45, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I am fluent in Persian. It would be nice to have the references verified by some other fluent speaker. Please read the references and put to a note here for verification. 128.100.5.135 (talk) 22:06, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

pre-election polls

pre-election poll table

• precision better than 1% probably unreasonable: Unless someone can find the numbers of people polled, the safest is to assume they're of the same order of magnitude in typical opinion polls anywhere in the world, i.e. something like 1000 people. That puts a minimum uncertainty of about 3%, so quoting to more precision than 1% is unreasonable unless we're sure that a poll was of 10,000 rather than 1000 people. Boud (talk) 21:44, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
• most recent at top: i suggest we order the polls so that the most recent is at the top. Boud (talk) 21:44, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
• table style: Someone who wants to find out how to make the style prettier, please do so! Boud (talk) 21:44, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
• better sourcing: People who can read Persian better than i can (easy!) could replace some of the "?" in the table. What would be best to overcome any discussion about "who is biased" would be to start wikipedia pages on any relevant polling organisations. The reader will then be able to decide if the polling organisation is left-biased, right-biased, anarchist-biased, hierarchy-biased, religious-biased, or run behind-the-scenes from Washington D.C. through the USA funded governmental non-government organisations intended to control democracies around the world - the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute (same acronym as Islamic Republic of Iran, IRI!), the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and the American Center for International Labor Solidarity. The reader can go to the individual wikipedia article describing the polling organisation and that article which will independently go through the WP:NPOV and WP:OR processes. This way we just list the NPOV facts and the reader interprets them how s/he wishes to. Boud (talk) 21:44, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

The problem is Government polls are usually classified and are not available to the general public, other reported polls do not even state the polling organization! So all you have is just where the poll is reported. Also note that taking an opinion poll can be considered a serious crime in Iran, an organization took a pool about relations with US (for Iran's parliament during Khatami's second term!), and as far as I remember, some of them received prison sentences for doing this. 128.100.5.138 (talk) 00:45, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Can you find a reference for the claim that "an opinion poll can be considered a serious crime in Iran, an organization took a pool about relations with US (for Iran's parliament during Khatami's second term!), and as far as I remember, some of them received prison sentences for doing this."? The main claim should probably go in another article, e.g. opinion poll, as a section like legality of opinion polling and content starting something like Carrying out opinion polls has varying legal status in different countries. In Iran, etc.. i would be a bit worried about putting too many persian-language references only in the English article - the reasonable thing to do IMHO would be to put them in both the fa. and en. versions of the article, to make sure that people fluent in the language can judge the validity of the citation. Remember that the more NPOV/RS/NOR facts we have in the wikipedias, both en. and fa., the more likely it is that the local and international circulation of facts that are credible and relatively testable will force whoever wins the election to face up to those facts. Or to put it another way: 97% (my speculation, not a fact :) of people who read these wikipedia pages will just read the "article" and not read the discussion page. Boud (talk) 15:22, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

The polling organization was called Ayande (In Persian:آینده) and Abbas Abdi was one of its members. Here are some links that I found on Google: http://www.peiknet.com/page0/paiez/azar/p124gozaresh.htm http://www.ayande.ir/1387/10/post_681-printable.html (In this link Abdi claims that the prison sentence was not only based on polling about US-Iran relations) http://pasdaran.persianblog.ir/post/449 In one of these links it is stated that Salaam Newspaper is also been closed because of publishing these polls. Note that I am not sure how creditable the references are. 128.100.5.135 (talk) 22:29, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

There are similar, English-language links at Abbas Abdi - i worked a little bit on it there and disambiguated Ayandeh and i'm copying your comment to Talk:Ayandeh (polling organisation) as it's the most obvious place for someone with time to work more on that. Boud (talk) 11:42, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

latest rayemelat and tabnak polls

• Can someone add the following polls to the table, I am not familiar with its structure: http://www.rayemelat.com/Archive.aspx http://www.tabnak.ir/fa/pages/?cid=50100 128.100.5.135 (talk) 03:43, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
  • i've added them, but i'll need some help. For tabnak, i've assumed that the gray, horizontal bar graph is for a national survey. Question 1: does the number 18391 mean 18,391 people surveyed (the phrase to the right seems to be "whole of Iran")? This says nothing about systematic error, but it does say something about random error. Boud (talk) 20:47, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for putting them. Q1: yes. Note: The poll you have put in the table is about who you will *NOT* vote for! There are three poll on this page. I am putting the numbers here: 128.100.5.135 (talk) 23:08, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Baznevis's Poll (will vote for): total 77058, Mousavi 28086 votes (%44.36), Ahmadinejad 25454 votes (%33.03), Rezaie 21227 votes (%27.54), Karroubi 2291 votes (%2.9)

OK - but i get for Mousavi: 28086/77058 = 36.448 - most likely you mistyped this. Boud (talk) 16:19, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Aftab News's Poll: (who you will NOT vote for?) total 18391, Ahmadinejad %62, Mousavi %28, Karroubi %7, Rezaie %4

Rahbord Danesh's Poll: The graph shows their recent polls, the same colors represent candidates (Mousavi green, ...) black is other (which includes Khatami before he dropped out) each horizontal line is %5, the lower axis is dates, but it is hard to read them: 87/12/6, 87/12/15, 88/1/1, 88/1/15, 88/1/26, 88/2/15, 88/2/26, 88/3/5, 88/3/10. The poll is interesting because it includes Khatami votes before he drop out (the only major other candidate). I do not think we need to put all of them. The last one is for 88/3/10 Iranian Calender: Mousavi %36.6, Ahmadinejad %32.1, Rezaie %26.6, Karroubi %5.7. Note: Tabnak is news site of supporters of Rezaie.

A reasonably objective choice i suggest is about once a month from this data set. Since i've put in 88/3/10, i'll add 88/2/15, 88/1/15, 87/12/15. Any later polls can be more frequent. Boud (talk) 16:19, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

• • Tabnak Qn 2: the numbers in the sentences above would give [28086 25454 21227 2291] / 77058 = [36% 33% 28% 3%] for [Ahm Mas Karr Rez] respectively. This seems to match the coloured poll evolution graph below (rant: why do the website publishers show a scan instead of a digital version of the figure itself? the scan is virtually unreadable. did they photograph a tv set?), except that Rezaei in the coloured poll evolution graph is about 7%, not 3%. Are these two polls for Tehran? i couldn't find the word Tehran except in the comments below, but i guess the text says something like "greater metropolitan area of the capital city"... For the moment i haven't used this info since i'm only guessing. Boud (talk) 20:47, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

I think I have answered it above. I don't know why they have published a scan, probably they have got a paper copy of it. 128.100.5.135 (talk) 23:08, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

• • Rayemelat: both the Rayemelat polls cited seem quite clearly to be for Tehran - i've put this in the table. The various polls in the table look a bit less wildly discrepant now, except for the YJC and Etemad-e-Melli polls, which only give rankings, and put Karroubi ahead of Mousavi. Boud (talk) 21:27, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Etemad Melli is Karroubi's newspaper. They were trying to convince other reformists that Karroubi has a chance of winning the election and should not be forced to drop out and support Mousavi. 128.100.5.135 (talk) 23:08, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

rajanews/press tv

Just a comment comparing the numerical data to text discussion in the press tv articles for the two Rajanews entries - the numbers (at least between these two dates/surveys) show Ahmadinejad support dropping and Mousavi support growing, but the text of the articles says the opposite. This is a situation where good referencing becomes ever more important, and where ordinary citizens can more easily "remember the past" and override misleading claims by politicians/newspapers/other individuals-or-organisations... i've webcitation.org'ed both of these, so that if either press tv has a web problem or changes their articles post-publication, then readers will be able to compare the original and new versions. Boud (talk) 21:49, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

claims of poll manipulation

Maybe this Rooz online commentary, clearly labelled as an opinion, would be useful? Unfortunately, it doesn't actually link or cite any "polls conducted by non-government groups". Boud (talk) 00:32, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

name of subsection

i'm putting back "pre-election" in the subsection title. Please see wiktionary:poll - the first meaning is:

"An election or a survey of a particular group."

and the adult population of Iran is clearly "a particular group". Whether or not a page like "opinion polling for the United States presidential election, 2008" could be named more clearly should probably decided at that article, not here. But that title (i haven't actually checked it) is ambiguous, since the election itself is certainly a wiktionary:poll, even if the term "opinion poll" tends to mean small polls of about 1000 people or so. Boud (talk) 14:52, 27 May 2009 (UTC) modified Boud (talk) 15:01, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Probably my point here is that we should reduce ambiguity if we can. Boud (talk) 15:01, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I would suggest you to also take a look at the page for election wikipedia:election. I agree that the an election can be considered a poll, but opinion polls it what is usually used for the polls we are talking about. take a look also at opinion poll which is exactly what we mean: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polls. Also pre-election poll is misleading because it can mean to poll taken just before election in contrast to post election, polls taken from voters during the election, polls taken a long time before election. If you check the page for opinion poll, you will see that election is not an opinion poll, so it is completely clear. I think we should keep with the name that is used for all other similar poll in other countries. I am changing it back to opinion poll. 128.100.5.135 (talk) 22:48, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

opinion polls table style/colours

Okay, so I've done some very basic work on the table to try to make it more presentable and wiki-friendly. Removing the question marks and excess cells. I agree that editors should seek out other election articles to see how it could be done here. I appreciate that "the election is itself a poll" but "Opinion polls" is in usage all across Wikipedia and I also see no reason for this article to be unique in this respect. Additionally, if users want to use different colors for different parties, we could. While Mousavi doesn't have a party, his campaign has consistently used a shade of dark green.--Patrick «» 17:00, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Patrik, can you change the colors of other candidates to following: Karroubi (White is the color they are using, their TV color is Yellow), Ahmadinejad (Red which is his TV color), Rezaie (Blue which is his TV color), I don't know how to do it. It would also be nice to have links to TV ads and debates. The files are available on some Persian sites which require registration. One exception is the following site which has the first TV adds: www.alef.ir 128.100.5.135 (talk) 23:51, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Patrick - nice work :) - that was my first mediawiki syntax table btw.

User 128.100.5.135: see what you think of my try with colours. For Mousavi, #0b4033 is my estimate of the dark green from the left/right bands of http://mirhussein.com/ . i couldn't find web examples of the other candidates' colours, so i just used those that you stated in words. i've tried to follow the convention that the leading candidate according to a given poll has that cell of the table darker. Patrick can probably help if you're unhappy with this and can't see how to edit yourself - some hints are at meta:Help:Table. Boud (talk) 21:33, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Boud, I think they are nice. Well done. :) Can you put the same colors on top of the page (top right corner), under the pictures for candidates? 128.100.5.135 (talk) 02:22, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I have done it myself. I also changed the infobox to show two candidates on each row. 128.100.5.135 (talk) 03:32, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

role of turnout

Someone removed the section on the role of turnout (how many people vote), stating Pre-election opinion polls: vague and biased statements removed, also not related to pre-election polls). Turnout can frequently have an important role in election results, because different demographic groups have different tendencies in voting (AFAIR, a high turnout favored Obama in the 2008 USA presidential election and a low turnout would have favored McCain). The reference here is indirect, but Der Standard and the BBC are risking their reputations by making these sorts of statements, and at least for the moment, they (or at least the BBC) tends to be considered a reliable source in the en.wikipedia. Whether or not the claim is biased is irrelevant from a wikipedia point of view - see WP:NPOV. If you can find some analysts (preferably not so anonymous) with unbiased or differently biased opinions, please add them. Boud (talk) 15:10, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I removed that paragraph. Turnout can have an effect on the result, but the statement are completely irrelevant to polls here. We can put it in some other section. One should have a poll that asks people undecided about voting or decided that they will not vote about who they would prefer to be able to related the turn out to polls. When anonymous analyst is reported to say something, it does not mean that the reporting organization is also supporting the claim. It is a method to report something without any responsibility. A politician can say something anonymously so the media will report it to manipulate the public opinion. Here, IMO, the analyst is doing this, and therefore biased. I don't think stating an anonymous source is good referencing. I put the text that I removed here:

According to Der Standard and the BBC, anonymous analysts have stated that Mousavi's chances of beating Ahmadinejad are directly correlated with turnout, and that Ahmadinejad seemed to become increasingly defensive as the date of the election came nearer. The anonymous analysts claimed that with a turnout of 60% or more, Ahmadinejad had no chance of being reelected, while a high turnout would favor Mousavi.

introduction/lead section

See Wikipedia:Lead section for a discussion of what should go in the introductory paragraphs, called the "lead section". In case it's not obvious: The lead should be able to stand alone as a concise overview of the article. In other words, claims of facts that are contradictory to sections in the main body of the article should not be present, even if they have references. The main work to WP:NPOV/WP:NOR/WP:RS-ise those facts should be in the relevant sections. Then a summary should go back to the lead.

For this reason, i'm removing:

and leading in the polls by a "healthy" margin.

The closest the Newsweek article gets to the "Opinion polls" section is this extremely vague statement: "Less than a month before balloting starts, all the polls give a healthy edge to the hardline incumbent." It doesn't give either the number of cities involved in polling, the names of the polling organisations, any constraints on the dates apart from "a month before" the election, nor even any specific figures. A useful sidenote for people who claim that Newsweek is a WP:RS: in this case, Newsweek is much more vague than any of the Iranian sources we have cited. Whatever biases are present in the sources we have at the moment, they're at least better (less worse!) than "Less than a month before balloting starts, all the polls give a healthy edge to the hardline incumbent."

Given the present content of the "Opinion polls" section, IMHO it is impossible to put any statement of who is the leading candidate in the lead section. About the only thing that all the polls agree on is that Rezaei is widely expected to lose. Apart from that, we could put something that more or less says nothing serious is known. Boud (talk) 20:42, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I have read in many Persian blog's, including reformists, that Ahmadinejad was ahead with a large margin, but some polls are showing that Mousavi is closing the gap. Specially the polling organization Ray e Mellat's polls (which are taken each week in Tehran) show that Mousavi is ahead in Tehran, and the gap is growing. In Iran's presidential elections, a candidate have to win majority (half+1) of the votes to be elected in the first run, otherwise, two top candidates will go to the second run. Some of reformists use this to argue that having two reformists will make it harder for Ahmadinejad to win majority of the votes in the first run. I can try to find a few references for this if I find some free time and you need them. 128.100.5.135 (talk) 02:56, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Also under "relative emphasis" from the lead section guide: Significant information should not appear in the lead if it is not covered in the remainder of the article, although specific facts, such as birthdates, titles, or scientific designations will often appear in the lead only, as may certain quotations. ... Boud (talk) 21:38, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Gholamhossein Karbaschi vs Karroubi's 'campaign manager, Gholam Hossein Karbaschi'

This Associated Press article discussing the reformists' claims on the role of turnout refers to Mousavi's Karroubi's "campaign manager, Gholam Hossein Karbaschi". However, Mir-Hossein Mousavi presidential campaign, 2009 (infobox) says that "Dr Alireza Beheshty" is a/the campaign manager. This is not necessarily a conflict, since it could be possible to have several campaign managers - i'm sure any politician must have many advisers and give them various titles depending on... political needs/perceptions On the other hand, the ex-mayor of Tehran Gholamhossein Karbaschi has what is presumably the same name and sounds like a Mousavi Karroubi supporter, whom AP could decide to refer to loosely as a campaign manager, whether or not he has that formal title/position or not.

If the person who made the statement is most likely Gholamhossein Karbaschi, then we should put in his name as a wikipedia link, and replace "Mousavi's Karroubi campaign manager" by whatever is a more accurate description, e.g. "Prominent Mousavi Karroubi supporter". Boud (talk) 21:07, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Gholamhossein Karbaschi endorsed Karroubi, not Mousavi, according to the NYT ref in his article. So presumably it's just a case of common names and multiple campaign managers. Boud (talk) 21:30, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

What a mess (mine)! In fact, the AP article says that Gholamhossein Karbaschi is Karroubi's campaign manager, not Mousavi's. This is consistent with the endorsement stated in the NYT article. The questions remain as to whether this is the same person in the two cases, and whether or not "campaign manager" is a correct description of his role. Boud (talk)

He is the same person. He was the previous mayor of Tehran (before Ahmadinejad). He is also a member of Executives_of_Construction_Party and although his party supports Mousavi, he is Karroubi's campaign manager. I heard that Karroubi has said that if he is elected, Gholamhossein Karbaschi will be his first vice president. 128.100.5.135 (talk) 02:46, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

TV debates between candidates

I have added a section for these debates. The schedule is available here: http://pr.irib.ir/Pictures/upload/upload17293ghoree-keshiphot.jpg Karroubi vs Rezaie were the first one, Tuesday 88/3/12. Ahmadinejad vs Mousavi was the second one, Wednesday 88/3/13. I think this one was a good debate which makes comparing their policies easy. I am transcriptting it and will put it here soon. I am planning to translate it to English and then we can decide which part of it should be on the main page. 128.100.5.135 (talk) 23:44, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I found that it is already transcribed:

• Karroubi vs Rezaie: http://www.irna.ir/View/FullStory/?NewsId=524357
• Ahmadinejad vs Mousavi: http://www.irna.ir/View/FullStory/?NewsId=526001 128.100.5.135 (talk) 15:48, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Request for more info: electoral system

The article does not specify in what way the election is fought. This may be obvious to Iranians living in Iran, but it is not for international readers (such as me). Does the candidate with a plurality win? Are there multiple rounds? Is the popular vote used or is the vote counted using multiple districts? Who are eligible to vote? If someone who knows could add this information, it would be a major contribution to the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.131.189.89 (talk) 19:28, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Done. Note: Add references and the requirements for being eligible to enter the race and become a candidate. rdt (talk) 15:50, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

External Link

• Moved from main page to here for discussion:

* We are half of the Iranian population (ما نیمی از جمعیت ایران هستیم), a non-partisan documentary by Rakhshan Bani Etemad in which amongst others women ask the Presidential candidates questions, in Persian, 7 June 2009: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.
Note: The text in the opening part of this documentary grants permission for the non-profit public viewing of it.

Rakhshan Bani Etemad has appeared in one of Mousavi's TV advertisements, therefore I am not sure it is non-partisan as it is claimed. 128.100.5.135 (talk) 19:45, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Not true! Have you watched the documentary at all?! All Presidential candidates are invited to watch the documentary and discuss the issues raised in it; Part 5 is devoted to these candidates (two attending with their wises and one, Mr Rajai, has attended with his daughter in addition) discussing the issues raised in the documentary. Despite repeated invitations, Mr Ahmadinejad has not participated in the discussion, but that has been his decision, rather than any partisan decision on the part of Ms Bani Etemad (no doubt, like others, Ms Bani Etemad has her political preferences, but that is not reflected in the documentary). I put the link back, but please next time study something before taking action --- I am certainly not here to promote one candidate above another. --BF 02:28, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

This is English Wikipedia...

...so try to keep in mind that even though this article about Iran can use the Persian version of dates, it should have a Western date as well, or only Western dates - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dates#Year_numbering_systems. 83.108.225.137 (talk) 12:01, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

I especially refer to the Opinion polls section. 83.108.225.137 (talk) 12:03, 10 June 2009 (UTC)