On Dec 11, 2006, at 12:19 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
FWIW, from the "glass is always more than half empty" camp:
Alexandre Leroi-Ponant, "Iran's New Power Balance,"
<http://mondediplo.com/2006/12/04iran>.
in which we read:
Ahmadinejad undertook a far-reaching reorganisation of power in the
state apparatus. The entire political and institutional hierarchy
has been transformed and several thousand posts have changed hands:
even university rectors and deans were pensioned off if they were
considered close to the reformists. Ahmadinejad, knowing that he
was shunned by the non-ideological fringes of the government,
attacked the technocracy. This autumn he dissolved the national
planning organisation that allocated the budgets for the
ministries, and transferred this role to the prefectures. These
come under the authority of the interior ministry, a conservative
stronghold.
During Khatami’s presidency, the ministry of Islamic guidance,
which supervised the output of the media and the intellectuals, had
been transformed into a cultural organisation. Publications dealing
with art and culture, Iranian society, and the opening-up of
politics, proliferated. Many new papers and magazines were
authorised. But the conservatives used the judicial apparatus as a
counterweight to crack down on dissident intellectuals and the
ministry reverted to its repressive role after Ahmadinejad was
elected.
Ahmadinejad handed out huge sums of money, in US dollar contracts,
to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Pasdaran (see “The
Pasdaran’s private empires”), which had supported him. Money for
the construction of a gas pipeline was granted to Khatam-ol-Anbiya,
a Pasdaran company. The Pasdaran has become an economic giant,
authorised to import goods for sale on the domestic market without
paying duties. It has also become a major player in the oil sector.
State largesse, which extends to a segment of its clientele,
combined with a policy that is a licence to print money, has
contributed to the inflation that has raised the price of
necessities and further eroded the spending power of the poor. This
has disillusioned a large segment of the poor as well as the urban
lower-middle classes with limited resources who were depending on
Ahmadinejad to improve their living conditions.
I'll forego comment in the interests of PEN-L peace.
