Parliament Dismisses Rouhani’s Economy Minister
The impeachment session of Masoud Karbasian, Iran’s Minister of Economy and Finance, was held on Sunday, the fourth of Shahrivar, in the Islamic Consultative Assembly, and at the end of the session, parliament representatives voted no-confidence in the Rouhani government minister for the second time in less than a month.
According to Mehr News Agency, in the Sunday impeachment session, Masoud Karbasian was approved with 137 votes in favor and 121 votes against, and he was removed from office.
The impeachment motion included 17 items, including “inability to manage the country’s economic affairs,” “lack of necessary measures to organize the country’s economy,” “disregard for resistance economy,” “inability to popularize the economy,” and “inability to clarify and sanitize the country’s economy.”
The session was held in the absence of Hassan Rouhani, and his First Vice President, Eshaq Jahangiri, along with several cabinet officials attended the impeachment session.
Among the representatives in favor of the impeachment were Hossein Ali Haji Deligani, representative of Shahinshahr, Hadi Bahadri, representative of Urmia, Hedayatollah Khademmi, representative of Izeh, and Elias Hazrati, representative of Tehran, who in their remarks pointed to issues such as stagflation, lack of coordination in the government’s economic team, the economy ministry’s inability to develop strategies to advance the country’s economy, and corruption in various sectors of the economy ministry.
However, Masoud Karbasian, in defense of his performance in the economy ministry, pointed to two issues of corruption and some events inside the country as well as American sanctions against Iran, saying that the problems created in the economic sphere “are not under the government’s control” and some others have emerged as a result of “the breach of faith by the hegemonic regime.”
Following its withdrawal from the JCPOA, the U.S. government implemented the first phase of returning previous sanctions from the fifteenth of Mordad and is set to implement the second phase from the thirteenth of Aban.
Over the past year, severe disorder in Iran’s foreign exchange market as well as increased inflation rates and rising prices have led to numerous protests in various Iranian cities, and in the latest case, in early Mordad, Tehran and several other cities witnessed protest demonstrations.
Reza Faraji Dana, former Minister of Science, Research and Technology, was the only minister dismissed in Hassan Rouhani’s first government. In Rouhani’s second government, parliament voted about three weeks ago in a controversial session to dismiss Ali Rabiei from the Ministry of Cooperatives, Labour and Social Welfare.
In that session, proponents and opponents of the impeachment accused each other of financial and administrative corruption in an unprecedented manner and cited specific and explicit cases. Although the parliament speaker said the accusations would be addressed within two weeks, no report on the matter was published after that.
Source: Radio Farda
