Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former
president and an elder statesman of Iranian politics, today called on country’s
politicians to approach the difficulties facing the country through prudence,
wisdom and use of expertise and avoiding self-centered promotion. Rafsanjani,
making the comments to Shia seminaries in the holy city of Qum, added that the
leaders should not let their internal divisions and their mismanagement of the
issues facing the country strengthen the enemies’ hands. (Aftab News, 24
October)
Rafsanjani was referring to the growing and
bitter infighting between President Ahmadinejad and Judiciary Chief Sadegh
Larijani over the president’s request to visit the notorious Evin prison in
Tehran and Larijani’s refusal to issue permit to a sitting president to visit
the country’s main prison.
In an unusually sarcastic and harsh criticism of the
president, Larijani wrote in an open letter, widely published in all major
media today, that Ahmadinejad was acting “like a king who has confiscated people’s properties
only to accuse the people of not respecting his property rights.” He also accused
the president of putting himself above the country’s constitution and the
separation of powers and again denied him permission to visit Evin.
Ahmadinejad had earlier called the refusal by the judiciary to let him
visit the prison an “unconstitutional” act and denial of fundamental rights of
any citizens, including those of the country’s sitting president.
These days Ahmadinejad's relationship with other branches of IRI government are sort of like Obama's relationship with Republicans in Congress. In both cases a lot of obstruction.
ReplyDeleteOh please don't compare the terrorist theocracy to democratic countries.
ReplyDeleteAhmadinejad is a nobody and couldn't move a glass of water without the dictate of Khamenei and company.
Mark,
ReplyDeleteDifferences that you might or might not see as significant: one of Ahmadinejad’s closest aides, who by the way is the head of the country’s official new agency IRNA, is thrown into jail for "insulting" the supreme leader for his work as IRNA director, being held at Evin, shamefully noted for its political prisoners’ wing. Ahmadinejad himself is threatened not so subtly by some of the most powerful people in the country. This is not Democrat-Republican type differences, at least I hope not!
Ahmadinejad's presidency is over. He will go down as the worst president in Iran's post-revolution history.
ReplyDeleteWhy doesn't Rafsanjani mention the fact that those internal divisions are caused by Khamenei himself, who is using such strategy in order to prevent a strong party in Iran that can question his authority in the future.
ReplyDeleteAnd I don't believe Ahmadinejad is a nobody. It seems that the mullahs are more afraid of Ahmadinejad, than they are for anyone else. Ahmadinejad isn't afraid of changeling some of the most powerful people in Iran, and they know Ahmadinejad isn't like Khatami or those so-called reformist leaders.
If it had been anyone else, the president would have been fired long ago. How easy (publicly) would it be to fire Ahmadinejad in these harsh economic times? They could blame Iran's economic downfall on Ahmadinejad, and use some parliamentary institutions to get legally get rid of them.
The questions remains, what are they afraid of? It seems to me that Ahmadinejad just simply knows too much. He has been in the political forefront for more than 7 years, and is familiar with the most secret affairs of Iran's elite officials.
Mark Pyruz, you're making an infamously fatuous comparison, presumably out of ignorance rather than deliberate deceit.
ReplyDeleteThe YUS republican Party hasn't staged sham trials and thrown Obama's aides in prison for imaginary crimes and then used the puppet judiciary to deny Obama the right to visit the inmates.