by Warren L. Nelson
The Majlis last week rejected three of President Rohani’s 18 cabinet nominations but approved most of the others by extraordinarily high margins.
One of those rejected lost by only a solitary vote.
The Majlis normally rejects a few cabinet nominees, seemingly just to show who is in charge, so the rejection of three nominees was not seen as a sign of harsh treatment being meted out to Rohani.
On the contrary, eight of Rohani’s 18 nominations won approval by huge margins exceeding 80 percent. Four years ago, when President Ahmadi-nejad presented his cabinet list for his second term, not even one nominee passed the 80 percent mark. But five of Rohani’s nominees even received more than 90 percent approval. Economy Minister Ali Tayeb-nia got the greatest margin of approval at 96.5 percent. The Iran Times could not find any other cabinet nominee who ever got that much support in the history of the Islamic Republic.
Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani, while announcing the voting results, even commented approvingly on the wide margins given so many of the nominees.
Four years ago, nine of Ahmadi-nejad’s nominees were approved with less than a two-thirds vote. But only four of Rohani’s nominees had a margin in that range.
Three of Rohani’s nominees were rejected, the same number as were rejected four years ago.
Under Ahmadi-nejad, two of the rejections were of his three female nominees reflecting Majlis opposition to women in high executive posts. Rohani did not nominate any women for the cabinet.
The three rejected were:
• Mohammad-Ali Najafi for minister of education, handling K-12 education;
• Jafar Mili-Monfared for science minister, a post whose main job is overseeing higher education; and
• Masud Soltani-far for sports and youth minister.
These are the three ministries that deal most directly with young people. There was speculation that the deputies were concerned about youth turning against the revolution and wanted less liberal candidates handling such sensitive posts.
There may have been other reasons as well. Rohani was much praised for picking ministers with deep experience in the areas they will deal with as ministers rather than the political hacks on whom Ahmadi-nejad so often relied. The nominee for sports minister, a former newspaper editor, did not have sports experience and may have been rejected for that reason.
The two rejected nominees to oversee education were also criticized for alleged links to “sedition,” referring to the Reformist candidates who lost in the 2009 election—Mir-Hossain Musavi and Mehdi Karrubi—prompting months of street disorders. But there were other nominees who were attacked for alleged “sedition” links yet were approved by the Majlis. So that criticism certainly was not determinative.
For example, Bijan Namdar-Zanganeh, the nominee for oil minister who served as oil minister for all eight years under President Khatami, was criticized for supporting Musavi in the 2009 elections. He was also slammed for alleged—and unproven—corruption while in office. But he was approved, albeit with a less impressive margin of 58.7 percent.
Mili-Monfared, who had the least support of any nominee, was criticized for ties to “sedition.” Probably more important, however, he was seen as being far too tolerant of student protests on any topic while he was chancellor at Amirkabir University of Technology.
There were also complaints about ministers who got some education in the West. But that criticism went nowhere. Mohammad-Javad Zarif, the nominee for foreign minister. was the nominee most loudly assailed for Western links. Deputy Ataollah Hakimi, the chief critic of all the nominees, charged that Zarif is “100 percent Western.” Zarif has spent about half his adult life in the United States and he was accused of holding a US green card, a charge he denied. Zarif sailed through with 82.6 percent support, a margin that showed the criticism did not hold with very many deputies.
Those who watched the four days of debate on the 18 nominees generally remarked on the viciousness and ideological spite of the critics, with many coming away saying the election had not changed the lowbrow nature of politics. But, to the contrary, the votes on the nominees suggested just the opposite—that hackneyed old criticisms and conspiracy webs not were controlling.
Some analysts suggested the large margin of approval for most nominees showed that most Majlis deputies had drunk in the results of the June 14 elections and decided that it amounted to a rejection of their old ways and required them to adopt new ways and to show a willingness to cooperate with Rohani.
The deputies do not face re-election for another three years so there will be plenty of opportunities for them to work with Rohani and to challenge him.
None of the votes in the Majlis is taken by roll call, so no one knows exactly who cast the nay votes last week. The Majlis deputies lined up to cast their votes in boxes set on the floor of the chamber, one for each nominee. Then Larijani announced the vote totals.
The anonymity of Majlis votes undercuts claims of democracy since no one has any idea how his deputy actually votes on anything in the Majlis.
The Iranian Majlis also oddly counts abstentions as no votes. Elsewhere in the world, including all UN votes, an abstention is treated as a statement that the voter was present but did not choose to take a position. An abstention is set aside and not counted when determining how the majority voted.
But not in Iran’s Majlis. That is the reason Najafi was defeated. The vote was 142-to-133 with nine abstentions. Anywhere else in the world, that would be a narrow vote of approval. But in Iran the abstentions are added to the nay votes. That meant the vote on Najafi was a 142-142 tie and Najafi lost because a majority—that is, 50 percent plus one—is required to win in Iran as everywhere else.
