The Islamic Parliament’s Assembly to address “Ahmadinejad’s incompetence”

Iran Press News: Translation by Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi

According to a report from Ahamdinejad’s own site, FARDA (named as such in order to confuse people with Radio Farda which is the Persian Broadcast of Radio Free Europe), though Ahmadinejad has only been in office for two months, the minority faction of the Islamic Parliament’s Assembly, the hardliners, in a cavalier and boastful scheme have begun addressing the issue of “the president’s political incompetence”.

During a meeting last week, the leading figures of this faction severely criticized Ahmadinejad’s 2-month report card and demanded that steps for an investigation be taken. Ahmadinejad’s firebrand comments at the “World without Zionism” gathering, the collapse of the stock market in Iran, the supplanting of 6 of the central banks’ directors among other issues, was also discussed in last week’s meeting. Sheik Qodrat Alikhani, the representative from the industrial city of Qazvin is a member of this lobby and is the originator of this query. According to the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, should the representatives of the Islamic Parliament’s Assembly vote against Ahmadinejad and find him incompetent, he will have to be impeached by Khamnei, the supreme leader. READ MORE

Based on section 2 - article 89 in the regime’s constitution: “If at least one third of the representatives of the Islamic Parliament’s Assembly agree to subject ‘The President’ to an interpellation for his management skills, performance and administration of national affairs, the President must appear, within a one month time period of the Islamic Parliament’s initiative, in order to give detailed answers to specifically posed questions. If, after the cross-examination of the president, the majority (2/3rds in this case) of the representatives find him incompetent and vote against him, according to section 10 - article 110, it will be reported to the Supreme Leadership (Khamnei) for him to enforce the impeachment of Ahmadinejad. ”

It seems however that the flamboyant minority faction which has spearheaded this investigation does not necessarily have the support of everyone in the Parliament’s majority and in fact has infuriated some. According to some MP’s, the best course of action is for the minority faction representatives to covertly contact the members of the majority in order to persuade them, that way. Several of the members of the majority have however indicated that they will in fact join the investigation as it gains momentum.

It is worth mentioning that several of the representatives of the Hardliners have specifically stated that: “this is a purely internal issue and though there are concerns about Mr. Ahmadinejad’s performance, we do, nonetheless, support him till the very end.”

So far, the only president deemed incompetent and impeached by these means was, the first president of the Islamic regime, Abol-Hassan Bani-Sadr who only after one year in office was impeached by Khomeini on June 21st of 1981.