Motion to question Ahmadinejad in parliament

GVF -- Conservatives members in the Iranian parliament (Majlis) are stepping up the pressure on Ahmadinejad following his unwavering support for his controversial aide Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei.

Reformist MP Mohammad Reza Khabaz told the Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA) that in three simultaneous but independent moves, the conservative factions of the predominantly hard-line parliament were seeking to question the Ahmadinejad in the parliament.

“The first move by the principlist [parliament] members which succeeded, came from the faction’s clergymen, which was in the form of a collective warning to the president signed by sixteen clerical members of the parliament,” Khabaz told ILNA while adding that the goal of the sixteen was to make sure that their warning would be a “historic” document as it was the “first” of its kind and reflected the clerics’ dismay towards the government’s positions.

Khabaz who represents the citizens of Kashmar in the Majlis, added that a pro-government MP was also preparing a draft for a “critical” letter to Ahmadinejad regarding the behaviour of Mashaei. He claimed that the letter would ask Ahmadinejad about the reason behind his silence with respect to Mashaei’s comments and his support for his controversial Chief of Staff. “I asked this MP who had been a staunch supporter of the government until two weeks ago, why was he in such a hurry to gather signatures for such a letter and he replied to me that ‘we want to do our duty and to prevent an even more radical by the parliament’. But this conservative MP only gave the letter to [his fellow] Principalist MPs to sign and did not allow the reformist MPs to join.”

Khabaz also told ILNA that in a third move, the Majlis members were planning to sign a motion on calling for Ahmadinejad to be questioned over “the government’s recent acts against the law and its neglect of the parliament’s passed bills, as well as recent remarks made by Mashaei.” He described the three parallel moves against the coup government as “unprecedented” and said that conservative members in the Majlis were competing against one another in “warning and questioning” Ahmadinejad. 

When asked about the number of signatories to the critical letter as well as the number of signatories to the motion to question Ahmadinejad, Khabaz said, “I am not aware of the number of signatures but there is great interest for this act and the MPs are still in the process of gathering signatures.”
 
Kabaz also noted that the likelihood of a motion to question Ahmadinejad was far more than before as “the people’s religious faith and their beliefs is under assault and their religious feelings have been undermined.” 

It should be noted that a total of 74 MPs need to support the motion in order for the president to be questioned in parliament.

Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei recently said that “the country should introduce the ideology of Iran, rather than Islam, to the world,” drawing widespread protests from the hard-line factions in Iran. He maintained that “without Iran, Islam would be lost,” and that if “we want to present the truth of Islam to the world, we should erect the Iranian flag,” the Mehr news agency reported. “Countries are scared of Iran, because the truth of Islam is here,” he added. 

This is not the first time that Mashaei’s comments have caused much uproar among conservatives in Iran. He had previously stated that Iranians were “friends of all people in the world—even Israelis.”