Iranian Citizen’s Reaction and Abuse of Power

Background

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad together with his family traveled to Tehran when he was less than two years old. His early education; primary and secondary, was attended in Tehran where he attained his diploma and was enrolled for a civil engineering course at Elm-o-Sanaat campus of Science and Technology. He enrolled for a Masters degree at the same campus in 1986 where he was a board member of the Civil Engineering scientific board. During the commencement of the Iraq-Iran war in 1980, Ahmadinejad was quick to rush to the western fronts to engage the enemy as he joined the Basij, a voluntary force of the IRGC (Islamic Revolution Guards Corps) where he served in various units.

April 2003 saw Ahmadinejad’s appointment by the municipal council of the capital Tehran as its mayor. The hard-line Iranian Islamic Developers Coalition controlled the council and in the year 2005, in the month of June, Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was sworn in as the sixth President of Iran (Ansari 22). His landslide victory of over 63 percent in the runoff election precipitated his nomination in the year 2009 to run for a second term.

Citizen’s Reaction and Abuse of Power

The majority of Iranian citizens who cast their votes for Ahmadinejad were convinced that he would fulfill his promises of improving the conditions and standards of human rights in the Iranian republic that is dominated by Muslim citizens (Hourcade and Silverstein 11). The issues concerning human rights ranged from addressing the torture methods that were in place then, the freeing of political prisoners as well as a look into the freedom of speech, expression and above all the freedom of the press (Kazemzadeh 105). However, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of abuses of power watch group was quick to blast Ahmadinejad’s administration for the escalation of persecutions of religious and ethnic minorities in which it sited the