Ninth Parliament: 'Scandals and Failures'

A member of parliament from Sanandaj states: 'The political deputy of the Minister of Interior and the head of the election headquarters announced in a meeting in Kermanshah province that governors, district heads, and officials in the western part of the country should not cooperate with the current members of parliament.' (Mehr, December 7, 2015) The Ministry of Interior's explanation, instead of denying this claim, confirms it. (Tabnak, December 18, 2015) This means that Rouhani's government considers the parliament's term to be over. With the end of the ninth parliament's term and on the eve of the tenth parliamentary elections, a suitable condition has been created for evaluating the achievements of this parliament. The ninth parliament is among the least productive in the history of the Islamic Republic. Iranian citizens will remember this parliament for disastrous laws such as the law on promoting virtue and preventing vice and scandals such as the payment of embezzled insurance funds to the electoral campaigns of some members. This parliament will not have any notable achievements even for its loyalists. Some of the scandals and failures of the ninth parliament include: embezzlement of insurance funds and election buying. After the trial and sentencing of Mohammad Reza Rahimi, Ahmadinejad's first deputy, he stated in a letter that he had paid amounts to 170 members of the eighth parliament, some of whom also entered the ninth parliament: 'The vote for the eighth parliamentary elections was held by a committee consisting of some principlist figures, and it was decided to financially support principlist candidates nationwide through non-governmental contributions. Among the contributors was a person named "Jaber Abdali," who was introduced to me by some members of parliament and judicial and executive officials, who expressed readiness to help. I, due to the sensitivity and assurance of the integrity of the contributions, like other cases regarding him, inquired through the inspection of the Court of Accounts from the relevant channels, and after assurance and a positive response, the documents of which are attached to the file, we announced our readiness to receive help from him and asked him to assist the candidates we introduced from his personal account and with his bank check. Ultimately, he allocated a total of 1.2 billion tomans to this matter, and all documents and copies of the issued checks, which were paid to nearly 170 candidates of the eighth parliament, are recorded in the file, and all of it was used for the elections; therefore, the total amount was 1.2 billion tomans and was directly paid to the candidates.' (ISNA, January 27, 2015) Law/Joke Just as Will Rogers said about the legislature and jokes, whenever the Islamic Republic's parliament says a joke, it becomes law, and whenever it legislates, the joke is made. The law on promoting virtue and preventing vice was so ridiculous that the Guardian Council, with members like Ahmad Jannati, who are willing to sacrifice the law for the sake of Sharia and the interests of the regime, raised 14 objections to it. The legal members of this council are all members of the Hezbollah supporters who went to university with the Basij quota and obtained law degrees, but they could not approve this plan either. Ultimately, this plan, which guarantees the violation of human rights in all its components, was approved by the Guardian Council with amendments from the parliament. Beating and pulling down On January 21, 2015, Ali Motahari was pulled down from the podium and beaten during a speech criticizing the house arrest of Mousavi, Karroubi, and Rahnavard. Motahari is a member of the authoritarian and totalitarian faction of parliament, whose candidacy has been approved by the Guardian Council. Motahari's positions in the area of lifestyle are exactly in line with those of Hezbollah supporters and Ali Khamenei. He, of course, does not deal with the law in the cultural field. Support for the violation of the law 230 members of the Islamic Consultative Assembly announced in a statement read in the parliament on January 6, 2015, that 'the house arrest of the leaders of the sedition is legal from our perspective.' (Tabnak, January 16, 2015) The fact that an 80% majority of the members of a parliament openly defends an act that is clearly illegal based on the regime's laws is an interesting event in the overall developments of the ninth parliament and legislation in the Islamic Republic. Journalists, wedding and mourning chickens When Mohammad Javad Zarif went to the Islamic Consultative Assembly on April 16, 2015, to provide explanations to the members of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee regarding the Lausanne nuclear negotiations, Kermani Qodosi, a member opposing the government, had a verbal altercation with him. Kermani Qodosi stated in this session that the Supreme Leader had previously warned the Iranian Foreign Minister regarding the negotiations, but Mr. Zarif denied this and accused Kermani Qodosi of lying. The tension between the two led the parliamentary security forces to guide journalists out of the session. Self-qualification For nearly four decades, there has been a dispute in Iran over the supervisory oversight, and the members of the ninth parliament also came to parliament with the approval of the Guardian Council, and the majority of them accept the supervisory oversight. Also, during these four decades, hundreds of members of parliament have been disqualified for the next term (mainly members of the third and sixth parliaments). In May 2015, the members of the ninth parliament, aware of this issue, approved a plan stating that the Guardian Council should not review the qualifications of the current representatives of parliament who are candidates for the next parliamentary elections, as the Guardian Council had reviewed and approved their qualifications four years earlier. According to this plan, other executive or supervisory factors also have no right to comment on the qualifications of the mentioned individuals. The members of parliament passed this plan with 125 votes in favor, 54 votes against, and 8 abstentions. As expected, this resolution was rejected by the Guardian Council the next day. After that, the members of parliament, in order to meet the Guardian Council's opinion, removed their previous resolution regarding the continuity of the qualifications of the current representatives from the law on parliamentary elections. Three urgent after two urgent In May 2015, one of the members of parliament approached some other members present in the chamber and proposed a two-urgent plan prepared to counter the US Senate's resolution. This plan called for the cessation of nuclear negotiations in the event of a threat from the United States. Some members also signed it after studying the plan; however, ultimately, Kermani Qodosi changed the title of the plan whose two urgents were not approved and submitted it to the presidency as a three-urgent plan to stop the negotiations. (Tabnak, May 22, 2015) Non-public sessions for public issues The ninth parliament, like the seventh and eighth parliaments, maintained a high number of non-public sessions even for very clear issues. Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, the Minister of Oil, reported in a non-public session of parliament on the latest status and developments in oil prices and fluctuations in global markets. (Tabnak, January 4, 2015) This report came at a time when people were learning about the decrease in oil prices and the amount of oil exports by the Islamic Republic through Persian-language networks abroad and internet sites. The extent of the drop in oil prices (its precise charts) and the reduction of the Islamic Republic's income through this route was a topic that any six-year-old child could discover by searching the internet. The issue of unemployment was examined with the presence of Rabiei (Mehr, March 9, 2015), nuclear negotiations with the presence of Zarif and Salehi (ISNA, April 6, 2015), events in Yemen (Kayhan, April 28, 2015), and many other topics from non-public sessions of parliament are among those issues where their non-public nature only prevents information from reaching a small segment of loyalists to the regime who do not expose themselves to the information of non-loyal media.