Tehran, August 22: The cabinet line up introduced by Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the 10th government is feeble, says a recognized parliamentarian.
“In general, the introduced cabinet is feeble and not proportional to the country’s capacities,” Principlist lawmaker Ali Motahari told Mehr News about his view on the cabinet introduced by President Ahmadinejad to Iran’s Parliament (Majlis) for a confidence vote.
Motahari criticized Ahmadinejad on picking nominees who followed his (Ahmadinejad) political, economic and cultural attitudes without any question and criticism, noting that choosing “dependent cabinet members would deprive the government of reflective and clear-sighted staff.”
“The president wants to control and rule sensitive ministries like the Intelligence, Interior, Oil, (Islamic) Guidance, and Foreign Affairs, therefore he has chosen dependent nominees to the posts,” he noted in his Friday interview.
Motahari commented on the issue of women ministers and said, “the considerable choice of many women ministers (three) as a broad-minded gesture was done under the influence of Rahim- Mashaei.”
Esfandyar Rahim-Mashaei turned into a controversial figure last year over a series of comments about friendship between the Iranian people and the Israelis.
He currently serves as an advisor to the president.
The prominent lawmaker said the best way the parliament and the next cabinet could work together would be not to give a confidence vote to disqualified ministers, thus obliging the president to choose more qualified members for the next cabinet.
This is while in a televised address to the nation on Thursday, President Ahmadinejad defended the proposed line-up of his next cabinet, arguing that he had to change his cabinet because the conditions of the country had changed after the recent presidential election.
Only months after Rahim-Mashaei’s controversial speech over Iran-Israel friendship, Ahmadinejad named him as Iran’s new vice president in July. However, Mashaei was forced to resign following an official decree by the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei and a wave of criticism from several political groups and parties.
This is while he has recently been convicted of ‘financial misconduct’ by the Supreme Audit Court of Iran. The court sentenced him to two months suspension from his government post, the Jomhuriye Eslami daily reported on Thursday.
—–Agencies