Ahmadinejad calls for early, free polls

Teheran : Iran’s hardline former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for the immediate holding of free presidential and parliamentary elections in a letter to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei published yesterday.

The call from a man, whose name is synonymous with the bloody repression of mass protests against his controversial re-election in 2009, marked a new act of defiance against a political establishment that has long since turned against him.

Ahmadinejad made no specific reference in his letter to a wave of unrest that swept Iran over the new year but it comes as the country’s divided political factions argue over how to respond.

“The immediate holding of free presidential and parliamentary elections - of course, without their being engineered by the Guardian Council and without interference by military or security bodies so that people have a free choice - is an urgent necessity,” he wrote.