without major changes. Also unchanged is the absence of party structure in the legislature, which former Speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel has said hobbles the institution and makes it ineffective.
Outgoing Speaker Ali Larijani defeated Haddad-Adel, who served as speaker in the 2004-2008 term, by a vote of 177-89. That was a larger margin than the 173-100 vote when the two men ran a week earlier for the temporary speakership.
Mohammad-Hassan Abutorabi-fard was elected first deputy speaker with 232 votes and Mohammad-Reza Bahonar was elected second deputy speaker with 179. Those two men have held one or the other of those posts for most of the past eight years.
The terms of the officers are for one-year only, but there are rarely major shifts in the duration of a four-year Majlis.
There appears no reason to believe the new Majlis will be any more effective an institution now than it has been in recent years. Four years ago, deposed Speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel said the Majlis doesn’t really work because the absence of political parties means the legislature is little more than 290 individuals pulling in 290 different directions.
Because there is no central direction to the Majlis, Haddad-Adel said in November 2008, the time and energy of the institution is drained away by routine matters and day-to-day business.
Haddad-Adel served as speaker from 2004 until 2008, five months before he spoke out about the limitations of the Majlis as an effective institution. Some of those who opposed Haddad-Adel argued, like him, that the institution was ineffective. But they blamed Haddad-Adel for that.
Haddad-Adel, however, said the core problem was the absence of parties. It is standard political theory in the West that parties are necessary to give coherence, structure and direction in a legislative body. Otherwise, the governing rule is little more than every man for himself. Parties limit individualism and harness members of a party to drive in the same direction.
Haddad-Adel said the common belief in Iran holds that political parties are evil and a source of disease for the Islamic revolution. (The crafters of the US constitutional system also viewed parties as an evil to be avoided, but within a decade decided they were wrong and changed direction.)
Speaking 29 years after the adoption of the Islamic constitution, Haddad-Adel said it was necessary for the country to review its position on political parties.
“A Majlis is established that is made up of good individuals, but these legislators do not have any links or bonds with one another in terms of ideas, schools of thought and preferred plans and programs. They, therefore, do not act harmoniously. This is a reality that I clearly felt [as speaker],” he said.
Nothing has changed in the four years since Haddad-Adel spoke out.
Haddad-Adel acknowledged there were also possible dangers with parties. “Turning a party into an icon is among the big dangers,” he said. “A party could take the place of our religion [if] we declare that anyone who is not a member of our party is not one of us.”
Another danger, he said, is that parties could become dependent on outside financial resources and shift loyalty to those moneymen rather than the Iranian people. That is a complaint often heard in the United States.
The Majlis also elected other members of the Presiding Board last week.
Elected as councilors were: Hossain Sobhani-nia with 166 votes; Mohammad-Hossain Farhangi with 164 votes; Mohammad Dehqan 161 votes; and Shahin-Mohammad Sadeqi 134 votes.
Elected secretaries were: Sharif Hossaini with 166 votes; Abdol-Reza Mesri 165 votes; and Mohammad Ashuri 152 votes.