Under the unsupported headline of “Iran’s parliament wants Ahmadinejad out”, The Jerusalem Post is reporting that Iran’s presidential elections may be held over a year early.
[Iran’s] Parliament approved a draft bill upon which the parliamentary and presidential elections would be held simultaneously in the first quarter of 2008.
As the next parliamentary elections are scheduled for February 2008, but the next presidential elections for June 2009, the new bill would reduce the four-year presidential term of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by almost one and a half years.
The members of parliament in favor of the bill, more than 80 percent, say that the simultaneous formation of the executive and legislative powers would enable better cooperation between the two powers and strengthen parliament’s supervision role.
To the best of my knowledge, Ahmadinejad is still rather popular in Iran, so I don’t know that this precedes his ouster, as the editors of the Post appear to. Still, if the article is correct and the Iranian parlament wants to strengthen its “supervision” of the President does provide some hope that, at least among the governing class of Iran, Ahmadinejad isn’t as popular or as politically strong as he appears in the U.S. media. I can’t help but think that that’s a good thing.
