Ahmadinejad held to election
promises By Kimia Sanati
TEHRAN - Iranian President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad, who came to power two years ago,
winning 62% of the popular vote, is rapidly losing
popularity for failure to make good on election
promises to improve the lives of ordinary people
by sharing Iran's vast oil revenues with them and
to respect their private lives.
A poll run
by the Tehran-based news website Baztab on the
second anniversary of the elections that brought
Ahmadinejad to power found his popularity
plummeting. The poll of 20,000 people showed that
62.5% of respondents who voted for Ahmadinejad in
2005
would not elect him president again. And only 3.5%
of those who did not vote for him said they would
now vote for him for the presidency.
"The
advocates of the [hardline] Ahmadinejad
administration claim the Baztab poll was biased,
but even a poll run by Fars news agency, which is
known to be very pro-government, revealed that
44.6% of the respondents to the poll believed his
economic policies had not had any positive effects
on the economy, compared [with] 30.3% who believed
he had made things better," a reformist activist
in Tehran said on the condition of anonymity.
Another 25.1% said things are worse economically
than they were before Ahmadinejad came to power,
said the activist.
"His campaign was
mainly focused on promises of fighting corruption
and improving people's lives economically," the
activist said. "He claimed the oil money was being
misappropriated and wasted. These were on the top
of the list of the millions of ordinary people
outside the minority hardline religious
establishment, whose main concerns were issues of
religious morality and religious values. The
president's failure to deliver his economic
promises has naturally disillusioned this large
group of voters, who find themselves under even
greater pressure than before.
"Voters
clearly stated their disappointment with the
government last December when they refused to vote
for the electoral lists that the president's
allies had put out for city councils and the
Assembly of Experts. Things are worse now.
Gasoline rationing and the problems it has caused
in transportation, tourism, agriculture and many
other areas are greatly contributing to people's
disillusionment with the government," he said.
Criticism of the Ahmadinejad
administration's performance in the economy is not
limited to the reformists. Many among the
hardliners and conservatives who joined forces to
bring him to power are also very unhappy with his
policies and their outcome. There is no ground
anymore for saying the government should be
granted more time, the hardline Jomhuri Eslami
newspaper said in an editorial recently.
"Nearly two years have passed since the
present administration became established. All
this time has been enough for gaining mastery of
things, control over whatever they needed to take
control of and establishing order of whatever they
wanted to give order to. Excuses such as saying
their performance is hindered [by adversaries] are
no longer acceptable to the people because the
government enjoys the Supreme Leader's special
support and no one and no group is able to stand
up against such a government," the Jomhuri Eslami
wrote.
Ahmadinejad persistently accuses
his adversaries of sabotaging his government's
efforts. "The mafia", as he calls them, were
responsible for the shocking hike in housing
prices, failure of the country's pharmaceutical
system, and excessive importation of sugar, Aftab
news agency reported the president as telling
Parliament members from his native Semnan province
recently. "The mafia" fabricated deceitful news to
make the government look responsible for the
increase in inflation, the president railed.
According to the results of an Internet
poll run by Aftab, 66% of more than 66,000
respondents believe that wrong economic decisions
by the government are the cause of inflation. Only
11% said problems created by his adversaries
caused inflation, and 12% found the country's
economic structure at fault.
"The problem
is that the government wants to improve things
through spending cash, and they have plenty of
that at their disposal," an economic observer in
Tehran said, requesting anonymity. "Government
expenditures from oil revenues over the past two
years amounted to [US]$120 billion, the highest
during the past 20 years. [Mohammad] Khatami's and
Hashemi Rafsanjani's governments had $30 billion
and $29 billion to spend in their first two years
respectively.
"When Khatami handed his
office over to Ahmadinejad, $15 billion had been
saved in the Oil Stabilization Fund. Inflation was
constantly going down before Ahmadinejad took
over, but the trend has reversed. The present
government has succeeded in spending all the $120
billion in oil revenues as well as draining the
fund and failed even to keep the economic growth
rate, just above 5% now, at the level it had
been," he said.
"The huge growth in
liquidity, doubled in the past two years, is
obviously the cause of the high inflation, but
very stubbornly and categorically the president
refuses to acknowledge the problem or to correct
his ways."
The latest figure for
inflation, for the three-month period ending last
December, that was recently released by the
Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran was
14.2%, up from 12.6% in 2005. The International
Monetary Fund has predicted inflation in Iran to
rise to 17.6% this year, the third-highest among
the Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries.
Critics in Iran claim the real inflation figure is
much higher. Last year the Parliament Research
Center found inflation at 21%, while the inflation
rate announced by the central bank was 13.2%.
To control inflation and regulate the
market, the government has opened the country up
to imports by lowering, and in some cases
removing, all tariffs. The huge increase in
imports is damaging the national industries,
agriculture and producers of household items, 57
economists cautioned the president in an open
letter two months ago. The policy will also cause
greater dependence on oil revenues and make the
national economy more vulnerable to unexpected
plunges in oil revenues, they warned him.
The administration's aggressive and
unyielding foreign policy is seen by many as the
cause of increasing isolation of Iran and the
sanctions imposed on the country for refusing to
halt its controversial nuclear program. Many
foreign banks are now refusing to deal with Iran,
and foreign companies, many of which have been
working on Iran's oil and gas fields, are on their
way out.
"For lack of a reasonable foreign
policy our government has to bribe other countries
like Venezuela, Nicaragua, Pakistan and India to
win allies," the economic observer said.
During the past two years, Ahmadinejad has
traveled to more than 350 cities and towns in
various provinces with his cabinet members to meet
the locals. During his provincial trips the
president has been handed some 9 million petitions
by the local people.
Seventy people have
been appointed in the President's Office to look
into the petitions, an official in the office
said. Forty percent of those who gave petitions
asked for financial assistance, 15% wanted help to
find employment, 5% wanted housing assistance and
another 5% needed assistance for medical care. The
President's Office has so far granted more than
$10 million as cash financial assistance to them,
Bijan Shahbazkhani, a member of Parliament, was
quoted by Aftab News as saying.
"Things
might have been more bearable if we were at least
given a share of the oil money," said the
35-year-old owner of a small restaurant at one of
the Caspian area resorts badly stricken by
gasoline rationing that has stopped the flow of
holiday makers. "Ahmadinejad promised he would
place food on our tables and jobs that were
supposed to change our lives. We are offered
low-interest loans to create our own jobs, but
investment is very risky and most of the people I
know who have received the loans are using the
money in the profitable real-estate market.
"I even know a few people who want to
return the loans they have received because they
don't know what to do with the money to be able to
pay the loan and the interest back.
"Ahmadinejad has failed us not only
economically but also in other respects," he said.
"At the time of his campaign, he expressly
promised that his government would have nothing to
do with the way people looked or dressed. For
several months now the police have been harassing
people on every corner for bad hejab
[Islamic dress code] and all the things they
consider immoral."
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