By Farshid Motahari, DPA,
Tehran : His political opponents accuse him of electoral fraud and refuse to recognise his re-election as president. People on the streets signal their resentment towards him with calls of “Death to the dictator”. Abroad, the Iranian leader is persona non grata.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s only hope lies with his allies in parliament and in particular, the Islamic republic’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But even they are now no longer one hundred percent behind him.
Behind the recent upset is the appointment of Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaie as vice president. Ahmadinejad wanted Rahim-Mashaie, his son’s father-in-law, as his first choice as deputy. But Rahim-Mashaie had fallen out of favour within the government and opposition when he called Iran a friend of the Israeli people.
Ahmadinejad ignored demands from within his own camp to rethink the appointment, and parliament then took the case to the supreme leader. Khamenei ordered the president to promptly dismiss Rahim-Mashaie. But for an entire week, Ahmadinejad ignored the instruction from the constitutional head who has final say on all state affairs.
Rahim-Mashaie eventually announced his own resignation.
“It is amazing that the president did not act immediately (on the instruction of Khamenei),” said Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the head of the parliamentary committee for foreign policy and national security.
Another parliamentarian warned, “This will have negative consequences for (Ahmadinejad) in the future.”
The clergy also provided criticism. “Such an instruction must be followed immediately, without hesitation,” Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, who belongs to the pro-Ahmadinejad camp, said.
Some however downplayed the incident.
“The case is being over-dramatised because Rahim-Mashaie’s remarks were not so bad, and the president has the constitutional right to appoint his deputy himself, without consulting parliament,” an observer noted.
Iran’s president needs parliament’s consent when appointing his cabinet, but not his deputy.
Further, Rahim-Mashaie’s remarks on Israel reflect the government’s position that political differences with Iran’s arch-enemies, the US and Israel, has nothing to do with the people in the two countries.
“Other officials have on several occasions made similar statements,” the observer said.
Observers believe that Rahim-Mashaie, because of his family ties to Ahmadinejad, is one of the few officials that the president can trust completely.
But the criticism of the president from the opposition, led by Mir-Hossein Moussavi and former presidents Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani and Mohamed Khatami, has found place in the conservative camp too.
“Parliament will now put everything under the magnifying glass because the opposition is waiting for even the smallest slip-up to expose the president and his followers,” a local journalist said.
It is therefore expected that the president’s new ministers would be closely assessed by parliament. “A few are sure to fail, Ahmadinejad should therefore have a few in reserve,” the journalist added.