16 - 22 August 2001
Issue No.547
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 16 - 22 August 2001 Issue No.547 |
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A bumpy start
A factional feud delayed the inauguration of Iran's president while the new cabinet cautiously encourages reform. Azadeh Moaveni reports on early skirmishes in Tehran
Mohamed Khatami, Iran's moderate president, sought a parliamentary vote of confidence yesterday for his new cabinet, which is distinguished from its predecessor by a cautious shuffle aimed at economic reform. The pro-reform majority in parliament is expected to approve three or four of the five new faces, but may balk at what many see as the poor qualifications of some named to the ministries they are intended to oversee.
The main change is the replacement of Hussein Namazi, the economy minister (who has long been more concerned with social justice rather than a market economy) by Tahmasb Mazaheri, a civil engineer and the president's economic advisor. While Mazaheri is more dedicated to opening Iran's economy, he is not considered activist enough to generate radical reforms.
In a country where 70 per cent of the population is under 35, Iran needs to create 800,000 jobs a year, according to the five-year development plan (2000-2005). Mr Khatami was re-elected in June with a sweeping 76 per cent majority, and promised to make beating unemployment his priority.
The retention of Bijan Namdar Zanganeh as oil minister after harsh criticism, mainly by conservatives, for concluding multi- million-dollar buy-back contracts with foreign companies, indicates the government's determination to stick with the buy- back system. The parliament has launched an investigation into oil contracts after allegations of extensive corruption in the oil industry.
Politically, the new cabinet compromises less with the president's hard-line opponents than his first-term cabinet did. That first-term cabinet included Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi, the intelligence minister, who was forced to resign after revelations that his staff ordered the killing of four intellectuals in 1998.
Despite progress measured by a cabinet more in line with, rather than partly ambivalent towards, Mr Khatami's agenda, the new list may nevertheless suffer parliament's disapproval. "Khatami's list doesn't satisfy the parliament or the people who want fundamental changes in the cabinet," a reformist MP told domestic newspapers yesterday. The proposed cabinet reinstates ministers of justice and commerce both of whom are believed to be imposed leftovers of Mr Khatami's first term, and may fail to secure a vote of confidence.
New appointees to the ministries of health, labour, co- operatives and education, and roads and transport, belong to the Islamic Iran Participation Front, the main reform party. To the disappointment of female MPs, who had lobbied for the appointment of at least three women to the cabinet, Mr Khatami failed to nominate one. The caucus of female MPs will seek posts for women at the deputy ministerial level. Parliament is expected to vote on the new cabinet on 19 August.
As a routine matter of cooperation, parliament would ordinarily have approved the conservatives among Khatami's appointees. But a recent show-down between the parliament and the hard-line dominated judiciary is expected to cool parliament's inclination to compromise. The confrontation resulted in a three-day delay in Khatami's second-term inauguration ceremony, which was only held after officials held emergency negotiations to settle the dispute.
The dispute arose over two appointments to the Guardian Council, a conservative oversight body that has frequently thwarted the legislative ambitions of the reformist-led majority in parliament. Reformists MPs rejected all but one of the hard-line-controlled judiciary's nominations, on the grounds that they were poorly qualified and politically biased. Hard-liners fought back by pointedly declaring that parliament's functions, such as the swearing in of a president, were illegal without the full presence of the 12-member Council.
For hard-liners, parliament's rejection signalled a potential shift in authority from appointed conservatives to elected officials, who overwhelmingly support reform. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself delayed Khatami's inauguration, sending a short letter to parliament declaring that the ceremony must be indefinitely postponed until the resolution of the conflict over the Council vacancies. The dispute was then turned over to the Expediency Council, an appointed body charged with negotiating disagreements between parliament and the Guardian Council. The outcome: a recommendation allowing new Guardian Council members to be approved with a simple, rather than absolute, majority of votes. With the inauguration hanging dangerously, and embarrassingly, in the balance, the 240-member parliament was forced to capitulate, and approved two of the rejected nominees by only 64 votes.
Conservatives challenged the reformers with clear tactics -- flexing their muscles, retaining the power of the Guardian Council, and intimidating parliament by reducing its legal authority to less than a rubber stamp. But neither side emerged encouraged. For reformers, doing their best to use parliament as an institutional catalyst for change, the dispute was an uncomfortable reminder of the structural obstacles they face -- Iran's tangled system of appointed and elected governing bodies is vested in a constitution that reproduces the unresolved and paradoxical ambiguities between a religious state and democratic republic that date back to the 1979 Revolution.
The battle was a useful example of how factional differences will be provoked and reproduced in the course of routine governmental matters. "This will have an undoubtedly regressive effect on Khatami's government in the second term and slow the process of reform, perhaps even more so than in the first," said Said Laylaz, an economist and pro-reform editor.
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New and improved? 15 - 21 March 2001
Message to Khatami 8 - 14 March 2001
Reform in a time of disillusionment 17 - 23 February 2000© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
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