In December 2005, the first round of his provincial tours began when he paid a visit to Ilam, the most deprived region in the west Iran. As the Presidential Office Chief of Staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei has said, the advantages of these travels will be cleared 20 years later, but many critics and even advocates of Iranian president believe that the advantages and disadvantages of these visits have become quite clear.
The provincial tours of Iranian presidents were not the new phenomenon. The same travels were made at the time when Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami respectively had taken presidential office, but the extent of their visits was not comparable with those of Ahmadinejad. This method was adopted in line with the actualization of Ahmadinejad's presidential slogans including being a man of people, removing deprivation and correcting injustice in various parts of the country. It was for the same reason that he chose Ilam province as the destination of his first provincial tour.
From the same visit on, the bulk of bills ratified in two or three hours sessions provoked the criticism of MPs and experts. The other criticism referred to the fact that some promises made by the president are out of law and his authority as defined by the Constitution. So they can't be put in practice. Also it was argued that once the expectations of people particularly in deprived provinces are raised, the process of constant development and providing support for production will be simply diverted to consumption and every day demands. The other problem was several media letters written by people seeking loan or employment which faced the executive organizations of provinces with a new problem. But these criticisms did not led Ahmadinejad to change his method.
He and his supporters regarded such provincial tours as a new management theory for the country and a way for the elimination of problems inherited from the past. Attracting supports given by the supreme officials of the country, they not only changed this process, but increased the number of ratified bills and promises which were supposed to be fulfilled in the second round of provincial tours. Even in the same round, the president was supposed to visit a village unannounced. Meanwhile travels made in the first round produced astonishing statistics: 6200 ratified bills, 14 million letters written by people, 100,000 projects, meeting people in 336 cities and towns and holding 780 public sessions.
Iranian Parliament (Majlis) showed different responses to such travels and a project was set as an agenda to scrutinize the bills ratified in these tours. The project was centered on probing the reasons behind the unfulfilled promises made by the president, the contradiction of provincial ratified bills with the Acts of Parliament and unrealistic statistics given after these travels. But this project was not finally ratified by the Parliament. Anyway a starter response came after the reports of the Comptrollers Office presented to the Parliament including expenses of these tours which exceeded 5 billion riyals ($5 million) for each travel and should have been provided through annual provincial budgets.
They believed that such practice is against the law, a point which is seemingly affirmed by the Comptrollers Office. So at least in the third round of provincial tours, the government must find a way to resolve this problem.
نظر شما