TEHRAN, June 16 -- Iranians were ready to go to the polls on Friday to elect a new president, although many people have vowed to sit out a process they call inconsequential in a country where unelected clerics exercise ultimate authority.
Public opinion surveys showed that Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a cleric, millionaire businessman and longtime fixture in Iran's theocratic establishment, remained the favorite. The Rafsanjani campaign, which has promoted a sense of inevitable ascent, has been buoyed by the former two-term president's reputation for managerial savvy and familiarity with the government's highest echelons.
Like other candidates, Rafsanjani has vowed to promote rapprochement with the United States and resolve tense negotiations over Iran's long-secret nuclear program.
"He's the best chance for democracy in Iran," said Sadjad Ghoroghi, a student activist working on the Rafsanjani campaign. "Because of his power and his level of thinking, he can do this."
[On Friday, Iranian state television showed long lines outside the polling stations and officials extended voting for two hours to 9 p.m., the Associated Press reported. However, there was no independent indication of the turnout.]
Campaign aides said Rafsanjani, 70, likely would not muster the majority of votes required to avoid a runoff a week later -- a stage never before reached in Iranian presidential contests, which tend to be landslides.
Of the six other candidates still in the field, Mostafa Moin, a reformist, and Mohammad Qalibaf, a former national police chief who calls himself a "fundamentalist reformist," appeared best positioned to claim a slot in any two-candidate runoff, according to analysts and polls.
Moin, a former cabinet minister for the incumbent president, Mohammad Khatami, carries the banner of the reformist movement that for eight years has tried to loosen the grip of unelected clerics on the economy and personal freedoms.
Khatami has served two terms and is barred by law from seeking a third. Widespread and often bitter public disappointment with him and the reformist movement in general threatens to severely dampen voter turnout. But Iranians also express anger at the appointed clerics, who continue to jail critics and who barred all but eight presidential candidates -- none of them women -- from a field of more 1,000 applicants. One of the candidates dropped out Wednesday.
Senior reformists said a surge in turnout could sweep Moin to victory without a runoff.
"A rapid change is happening," Moin, 54, told a rally in Tehran on Tuesday night after a cross-country campaign swing. "We have seen a lot of change in people's opinion in the last few days."
Moin's campaign has sought to deflect attention from the reformers' failures -- especially in invigorating the economy and creating jobs for a young workforce -- by focusing relentlessly on the intransigence of senior clerics.
