Iran: Khamenei likely to keep
Ahmadinejad By Yasaman Baji
TEHRAN - Amid growing and increasingly
harsh criticism of his handling of the economy,
talk of the removal of Iranian President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad has regained momentum in the country
in recent weeks.
But, according to most
observers, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, is unlikely to back any move to shorten
Ahmadinejad's term, which runs out in mid-2013,
for fear that impeaching him will only wreak
greater havoc on a political environment that is
already highly polarized and contentious.
Over 100 members of the parliament, or
Majlis, have signed on to a demand that the
president be summoned to answer questions about
the recent drastic devaluation of the currency.
Runaway inflation, combined with rising
unemployment, has rattled many
MPs concerned with the
devaluation's impact both on the price of key
imports and the cost of operating factories and
agricultural enterprises.
If the president
either refuses to appear or fails to explain his
policies to parliament's satisfaction, the issue
may eventually be referred to the judiciary,
which, would, in turn, clear the way to his
removal before the presidential election scheduled
to take place next June.
But even the MPs
who have called for Ahmadinejad to testify are not
optimistic that such a scenario is realistic.
"Neither MPs have hope that such questioning will
lead anywhere, nor the representatives of the
government are trying to stop the process,"
according to Etemaad Daily.
Calls for
Ahamdinejad's removal are not new. In mid-summer
there were reports that two former members of
Ahmadinejad's cabinet - former foreign minister
Manouchehr Mottaki and former interior minister
Mostafa Pourmohammadi - had written a letter to
Khamenei calling for the president's removal.
Khamenei, however, has proved reluctant to
criticize the president or acknowledge the severe
economic woes the country faces. In the two weeks
of intense volatility in the currency market, he
even denied during a provincial visit the
existence of an economic crisis.
He
acknowledged that problems such as unemployment
and inflation exist "like everywhere else", but
insisted that these problems can be overcome.
"Nothing exists that the nation and officials
cannot solve," he said.
Khamenei's
positive take on the state of the Iranian economy
is received with quite a lot of skepticism among
the population. Many people see Khamenei as
oblivious to the crushing burden of economic
difficulties that increasingly dominate
conversations at dinner tables, in cafes, and in
the street.
Khamenei's continued support
for Ahmadinejad is also much discussed. Some
prominent politicians, such as Deputy Speaker
Mohammadreza Bahaonar, have publicly said that the
Leader wants the government to finish its legal
terms. "The cost of removing the president is more
than us doing nothing for another year," he said
recently.
This is not a view shared by
Ahmad Tavakoli, another prominent MP from Tehran.
"Ahmadinejad's period is over, and the
continuation of his presidency is not positive,"
he said this week, suggesting that he disagrees
with Khamenei's decision to tolerate Ahmadinejad
until the end of his term.
There are other
theories why Khamenei will continue to support
Ahmadinejad. According to Ali, a journalist who
asked only that his first name be used, Khamenei
cannot back down from the support because he is
unable to explain the costs his support of
Ahmadinejad in the disputed 2009 election have
imposed on the people and the country. "Khamenei
prefers the current situation to acknowledging
that he made a mistake," Ali insists.
Reza, a 58-year-old political activist,
sees fear as the explanation for Khamenei's
support for Ahmadinejad. He believes that
Ahmadinejad's penchant for creating "corruption
dossiers" on key political actors "will eventually
be directed at Khamenei's family whose financial
record is not without blemish."
According
to Reza, if pushed, "Ahmadinejad will reveal the
information he has and this scares the Ayatollah.
Through his support Khamenei is in effect paying
for Ahamdinejad's silence."
In reality,
Khamenei faces a complex situation. On the one
hand, he must deal with the more public and
harsher criticism of Ahmadinejad's economic
policies, and, on the other, the potentially
destabilizing impact of the president's removal.
So far, Khamenei's approach in balancing
these two concerns seeks a third path, which,
according to one political commentator, is "to
take effective control of executive affairs and
transform Ahmadinejad into a show president whose
time is spent traveling abroad."
The
result can be seen in Khamenei's conduct in the
past few years. Until recently, Khamenei was
always considered to be a "sitting Leader" whose
annual trips to a designated province or public
appearances were mostly limited to official
events, such as the anniversary of the death of
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Islamic
Republic's founder.
Since the end of the
post- 2009 election protests, however, Khamenei
has taken many more short trips. Earlier this
year, for example, he comforted the family of an
assassinated nuclear scientist at their home. He
also took a quick trip to East Azerbaijan after
the August earthquake while the president was in
Saudi Arabia.
More significantly, he has
been meeting with economic actors and their
representatives in the Chamber of Commerce and
Industry, eliciting their views and promising
redress. One recently elected MP who did not want
to be identified told IPS, "I send requests
regarding my district's needs directly to the
Leader and not the president."
A
University of Tehran professor says that the roots
of Khamenei's increased activism can be found in
Ahmadinejad's extensive use of executive privilege
and extra-legal powers to circumvent and
marginalise other branches of the government,
particularly the parliament.
According to
the professor, however, Khamenei may also be
engaged in unconstitutional conduct by interfering
in the affairs of the executive branch. "Khamenei
is as blameworthy as Ahmadinejad in weakening the
rule of law and preventing other institutions from
performing their supervisory task in relation to
the executive branch," he says.
Khamenei
rejects these criticisms and said in April 2011,
after he prevented Ahmadinejad from firing the
intelligence minister, Heydar Moslehi, that "the
office of the Leader has no intention of
interfering in the decisions and activities of the
government, unless it feels that an interest of
the state has been ignored."
These days,
however, his words are received with skepticism.
Maryam, a retired teacher, sees in Khamenei's
performance a desire to centralize power in his
office. "He wants a weak president so that he can
be in control and be in charge, and now he is in
charge of everything. Why should he change the
situation?"
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