Tensions Rise in Iranian Parliament as Official Faces Confidence Vote
A top Iranian minister appointed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad earlier this year is facing a motion of no confidence today on charges that he tried to bribe members of Parliament not to impeach him. The attempt to impeach Interior Minister Ali Kordan came after an investigation led to the discovery that Kordan’s Ph.D. from Oxford University was fake, as well as the Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees he claimed to have obtained from an Iranian university. The scandal took a turning point last Wednesday when $5,000 dollar checks were distributed to parliamentary ministers, supposedly as donations for the legislator’s local mosques. The legislators did however sign two receipts for these donations, one of which was a letter to the speaker of Parliament asking for the impeachment to be dropped. President Ahmadinejad, however, does not seem bothered by the situation, asking “who cares even if Mr. Kordan’s degree is fake?” It has been suggested by analysts that Ahmadinejad has not been supportive of the impeachment due to the possibility that it could hurt him in the upcoming presidential elections in June of 2009, though one Parliament member has written a letter suggesting that impeaching Kordan in fact could have in fact won him millions of votes. It has also been suggested that Ahmadinejad’s nomination and unwavering support of Kordan’s position is due to Kordan’s agreement with Ahmadinejad’s policies, whereas the previous interior minister was dismissed because of his differences with the president.
Kayla Cahoon
