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May
2008, Nos. 46&47 |
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Endeavor |
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Toward a Downsized Government
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A major barrier to Iran’s development is absence of
powerful political parties. |
A powerful parliament is another feature
of a downsized government. For a parliament to be powerful there should be
real deputies who are brave enough to question and oversee government’s
performance. They should also be capable of interaction with the government.
Of course, there should be no confrontation between government and parliament
as it happened over working hours of banks or when the president refrained
from complying with Majlis ratification and Majlis speaker had to resort to
the Supreme Leader.
If we aim to be the first power in the
region and move toward all-out development, we must avoid of sinusoidal
policies, which will only serve to waste country’s resources. I think a
downsized government and a powerful Majlis are all we need to move toward
development. Reformists Coalition Headquarters collects votes for people whose
names would be on the reformists list. Perhaps some of them would be chosen
and others not, but the main approach is that the Headquarters and National
Trust Party share many commonalties.
A major barrier to Iran’s development is
absence of powerful political parties. Perhaps parties facing domestic or
foreign limitations had been there for a while before losing their importance,
but if we pursue true development, we must establish true parties. Perhaps in
small towns, parties do not play a major role in elections, but they are
influential in big cities. Therefore, parties are needed to ensure people’s
high electoral turnout. Reforms will prevent certain groups to promote
reactionary ideas under the aegis of Islam. It is not appropriate for the
highest ranking executive official to claim that he has been surrounded by a
halo when addressing the United Nations General Assembly meeting. Reformists
cannot accept such claims.
Reforms constitute a way of thinking,
not a revolution, and reformists are not trying to drastically change
infrastructures of the Islamic system. In fact, reform ideas were initiated by
Imam Khomeini because an overarching system is one which can accept feedbacks.
The ninth government had availed of the
most exceptional economic conditions in the whole history of this country and
all organs of the Islamic system supported it.
Reformists have plans to run the country
on an oil price of 100 dollars per barrel, but it seems that some politicians
have no plans and are trying to derail the country’s development.
Unfortunately, some parties lost a number of their candidates for the recent
parliamentary election due to disqualifications and parties were less
motivated to take part in the election. However, political parties were
determined to take part in the election to prevent Majlis from becoming a
ceremonial body. The main premise was that high turnout of academicians and
independent forces would enable the reformists to gain majority seats in the
parliament. At present, reformists stand a high chance of being elected in
those constituencies where they have been given a chance to run and in other
constituencies, independent candidates are probable to win. The main concern
of reformists is to hold healthy election and this should be the main concern
of the state officials to ensure that people’s votes would be respected.
Setting
direction of domestic economy:
Once it was said in the seventh
government that the economic ship of the ninth government has no compass. Our
most important effort should be aimed at setting correct direction of that
ship. At present, a foremost challenge facing the Iranian economy is heavy
dependence on petrodollars. A country with such resources can progress
rapidly, but when we look back at the past 40-50 years, we see that oil
revenues have played a destructive role in the Iranian economy. Oil has also
influenced political issues and has made the government unaccountable to
people. When people fund government projects through taxes, they are in a
better position to oversee its performance, but with abundant oil, governments
have always thought that they are doing a favor to people by providing them
with facilities and there is no reason for accountability.
In reality, however, oil revenues should
play their true role in development of the country. Unfortunately, oil is
playing a destructive role in most countries which are dependent on natural
resources and per capita growth figures for those countries is constantly
lower than countries which are not reliant on natural resources. This
challenge has led to a more serious challenge in the form of an oversized
government. That government has encroached upon all fields in which people
should be active.
The main question regarding strategic
development of the country is how governments are to realize the ideal goals
which they promise to their people? How we must create foreign policy
conditions as well as domestic conditions and tools which would take us to our
ideal goals? Obviously, such changes do not occur spontaneously and a major
precondition is that the government should be able to play an effective role.
I believe that short-term or medium-term executive policies can take us to the
ideal point. We had three plans after the war ended: one plan aimed to
compensate war ravages; the second plan sought to improve economic conditions,
and the third plan gave priority to economic liberalization. Liberalization
would have downsized the government and enabled it to interact with the world
in a positive manner. At the same time, it would have done away with economic
rents which lead to loss of resources, reduced dependence on oil revenues, and
help the country to achieve its economic goals. The Third Economic Development
Plan convinced the country’s economic officials that the country was ready for
an economic spurt. Therefore, the Supreme Leader asked the government to
prepare the 20-Year Perspective Plan in cooperation with the Expediency
Council through a major work which took 3-4 years.
Important role
of parliament in economic legislation:
Correct legislation is requisite
for achieving development goals. However, status of legislature has declined
so dramatically that the Executive determines about working hours of banks
while some laws ratified by the parliament are easily ignored. This shows that
interaction between Majlis and government has not been satisfactory. Attention
to basic economic principles and having good knowledge of issues for which
laws are ratified are important issues that should be taken into
consideration. Can following suit with successful countries be helpful? The
answer is certainly negative because their policies may have been suitable for
their own countries, but if we wanted to achieve the same goals, we should
take a different path.
However, taking advantage of experiences
gained by other countries will help us take a shorter route. During recent
years many countries moved to modernize their economies and the first country
which did this was Britain where the trend took 58 years. The United States
did the same in 49 years, Japan in 38 years and South Korea, which started its
march toward development almost simultaneous with our country, did it in 11
years. Finally, the most successful country in this regard has been China,
which has greatly increased its per capita income in a matter of less than 10
years. Therefore, correct policymaking will help us achieve our goals sooner.
The main goal of the government is to
compile policies to achieve ideal goals of the 20-Year Perspective Plan
because the world is moving so rapidly that the slightest mistake in
policymaking may have irreparable consequences. Therefore, we must make
suitable developmental policies by paying attention to experiences of
countries which have been already successful in this regard.
Those countries first invested in their
manpower. No country has been able to achieve development without attention to
its manpower. However, the ninth government talks about development at a time
that development has not taken place in reality. Instead of spurring
production, unprecedented high oil revenues have only increased imports and
importing goods and services is known as the sole way to control inflation.
A powerful political will is needed to
run the country. A sloganeering government cannot promote industrialization.
The Perspective Plan pursued an ideal goal on the basis of which the Fourth
Economic Development Plan has come into being. However, due to incorrect and
unscientific policies, indicators of economic growth, production and capital
are not proportionate to outputs. Those who are chanting slogans about
controlling inflation should tell people why when they had full control of the
government and the parliament, inflation shot up from 12 percent to 20
percent? The ninth government and the seventh Majlis were endowed with
unprecedented oil revenues.
The most natural expectation was that a
government which was the result of election, not a revolution, should abide by
country’s laws and treat 150-160 billion dollars of oil revenues in a logical
manner. However, despite people’s expectations who were looking forward to
higher living standards, the government policies turned Iran into a rich
country with poor people. As a result of those policies, inflation has
increased from 13 percent in 2005 to 20 percent in 2007 and is expected to go
higher during the new Iranian year. The main reason for such a high inflation
is inattention to past policies while none of those countries which are
considered developed now, have been ignorant of their human resources. |
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CURRENT ISSUE |
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May 2008
Nos. 46&47 |
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