Election Of Critic At Chamber Of Commerce Angers Iran MPs

Around 30 lawmakers have urged the government to recent annual elections at the Iran Chamber of Commerce, which sometimes voices independent opinions.

In a letter to the newly appointed minister of industry, mines and trade, Abbas Aliabadi, published by the hardliner Tasnim news website, these lawmakers said the position of the chairman of the chamber, which represents the private sector, is considered as a “significant and sensitive position according to law”. 

In elections held Sunday, Hossein Salahvarzi, a businessman who has been an outspoken critic of the government, was elected as chairman. 

One of the two candidates who ran against Salahvarzi, Younes Zhaeleh, is known to have close ties with the government. 

Salahvarzi obtained 265 votes against 95 votes for Zhaeleh and 62 votes for Hossein Pir-Moazzen. 

The chairman of the chamber which has over 400 members has the role of coordinating between the private sector and the government and is sometimes required to participate in meetings with government officials. 

Therefore, the lawmakers argued, the newly elected chairman who they claimed had supported the recent protests and those who sought to overthrow the Islamic Republic, should not have been allowed to run. 

The chamber of commerce is a semi-independent organization, which like media outlets is monitored and controlled by the regime. An outright opponent would not be allowed to run for its chairmanship.

“Did the country’s security and supervisory bodies take national interests as a joke” they asked and said Salahvarzi had not been approved to run by the ministry’s security department. 

Tasnim also claimed that “security and supervisory bodies”, presumably the ministry of intelligence and IRGC’s intelligence organization (SAS), have referred to “financial [corruption] cases” for Salahvarzi’s disqualification in their correspondences. 

Donya-ye Eghtesad, an economic daily, reported that until Saturday evening it was still unclear whether the chamber’s elections would be held according to schedule the next day due to the controversies over the vetting of candidates including Salahvarzi. 

Iran Chamber of Commerce often referred to as “private sector’s parliament” has around four hundred representatives who are annually elected at the provincial level. 

The last elections of chambers of provinces were held on March 11 instead of February 29 because a supervisory body disqualified over 40 percent of candidates, delaying the vetting process. 

Mehdi Karbasian, a former deputy minister of industry who represents several high-profile companies, and Masoud Khansari, the then incumbent chairman of Tehran Chamber of Commerce, the most influential chamber in the country, were among the disqualified candidates. 

Khansari and other members of the chamber had criticized regime policies that have led to an economic crisis, including a confrontational foreign policy.

Authorities said the vetting was based on a recent regulation that required candidates to have at least two consecutive years of membership in chambers of commerce, to have paid insurance for a minimum of twenty employees during the past year, to have had a minimum annual turnover of 150 billion rials, and to have also been awarded for exports by the Trade Development Organization.

However, some Iranian media outlets such as Aftab News which is close to former President Hassan Rouhani and the Moderation and Development Party alleged that the real reason behind the disqualifications was political as these candidates had been speaking against the government of President Ebrahim Raisi and its policies. 

“The ministry of industries, mines and trade and the government are trying hard to shift the control of the chambers, particularly the chambers of Iran and Tehran, to a certain political faction,” Aftab News quoted one of the disqualified candidates who did not want to be named as saying.

Another daily, the reformist Etemad newspaper, predicted that the elections would be engineered to shift the control to government supporters.

Chambers of commerce often produce economic reports that the government finds embarrassing, or they criticize proposed budget bills and other plans.