Ahmadinejad Not Cooperating with Majlis

Maryam Kashani, Rooz Online:

Is the honeymoon between president Ahmadinejad and the other two branches of Iran’s government over?

Just a few months into his presidency, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is already displeased with Iran’s Judiciary and the Legislature. Perhaps the problem was that Ahmadinejad thought that the members of the Majlis (Iran's Parliament) would support him unconditionally, like the aides he chose for his cabinet. He had some reason to believe this because the majority of the members are hardliners and conservatives who also got into the body through means not radically different from his. When speaking to reporters after introducing his cabinet nominees to the Majlis, there was not an iota of doubt that his team would be fully approved with a unanimous vote. As it turned out, four of his cabinet nominees who were also his close aides were rejected outright, while a good number received just marginal votes. In the words of one Majlis deputy, “a faction in the legislature wanted to show who is boss.” Another, Ms Fateme Ajorloo clarified the issue by saying that “had the president consulted with the Majlis before presenting his choices, things would have turned out better for him.”

In the beginning of October, two bills presented by the government were frozen by the Majlis, indicating further rift between the two. This is what appears from the outside. Let’s take a look and see what the president’s friends have to say about this state of affairs. Emad Afrough, the Chairman of Majlis’ Cultural Committee says that Ahmadinejad did not consult with the political elite. The danger for the current government is that its inappropriate policies may simply be passively accepted, thus taking the country into further crises, warns Afrough, who is a leader of the doctrinaire faction of Parliament. Other MPs have similar complaints. Abasspour Tehrani, Chairman of the Education and Research Committee says he wrote to the president expressing his views and the needs regarding nominating someone to the position of Minister of Education, but never received any response from him.

On a larger scale, the Majlis had asked Ahmadinejad’s cabinet to present it with a bill to conserve petroleum products by August, 2005. Nothing came and Parliament passed a bill banning the imports of gasoline.

In those government agencies where no cabinet ministers have been nominated, the situation is even worse. According to a member of the National Security Council Committee of Majlis, “we do not know what is going on in strategic ministries such as the Oil Ministry because no one talks to us about the government’s view or policies.” Another MP goes further and says despite the first failure in completely filling his cabinet, there are still no consultations and debates initiated by the executive branch in finding suitable nominees for the four ministries that have no ministers. “I do not understand the president’s hesitation in this regard,” says Abbaspour. READ MORE

But Ahmadinejad’s lack of interest in working with the Majlis is not confined to his cabinet posts. The Majlis has passed a number of resolutions urging the government to take specific measures in the fields of balancing salaries or stabilization of prices, none of which have even been responded to by the executive. This attitude towards the MPs only makes the president’s own agenda more difficult if not impossible to implement. So out of tune is this approach that even ultra-conservative Kayhan daily which fully supports the president complained about the government’s unresponsiveness.

Ahmad Tavakoli, a prominent conservative-right wing politician who has been an MP and a university professor, told semi official Fars news agency that “total and unconditional support for Mr. Ahmadinejad’s team while good, may also lead to mismanagement”, leading him to propose “critical support” for him, meaning that his policies should be criticized while he should be politically supported.

No matter what, it is clear that the Majlis and even the Judiciary are not too pleased with Ahmadinejad, just as Ahmadinejad is not too comfortable in approaching them for advice, ideas, support etc. Perhaps this is because of his inexperience. Perhaps it is his way of being “kind”, a slogan that he pursued during his presidential campaign. Whatever the reason, the lack of cooperation between the branches and the faux pas that have already taken place domestically and internationally are probably the reasons why Iran’s final arbitrator, ayatollah Khamenei, or the Supreme Leader as he is officially called, recently increased the powers of the State Expediency Council led by veteran politician Hashemi Rafsanjani to oversee the work of the executive branch. So the president is after all, in the words of the British news weekly magazine the Economist “a knife without a blade”, a term that was also used for Iran’s first post-revolution Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan. The latter resigned because of his political powerlessness and numerous power centers beyond his control.