This is quite interesting and relevant. I knew that some privatisation was going on. I was under the impression that some of the privatisation was in effect giving state assets to the Revolutionary Guard so as to increase their power and debts to Ahmadinejad.
Mousavi of course has been made over into a liberal. As the head of Mossad pointed out too Mousavi started the nuclear program!
I fear neither side is interested in building up anything like a socialist system. However I cannot see that foreign capital would have that much interest in Iran at the moment given the economic sanctions imposed. If Mousavi won would there not be more privatisation and loosening of restrictions on private capital. By the way Rafsanjani has just come out praising Khameni and claiming as the regime does that the protesters need to be put in their place and any complaints made through legal channels". This leaves Mousavi and his supporters out on a limb. Rafsanjani has obviously decided not to side with anyone who threatens the system. The people ie. the establishment are busy neutralising the protest and being vigilant.
"The developments following the presidential vote were a complex conspiracy plotted by suspicious elements with the aim of creating a rift between the people and the Islamic establishment and causing them to lose their trust in the system," Rafsanjani said Sunday.
"Such plots have always been neutralized whenever the people have entered the scene with vigilance."
from http://www.presstv.ir/pop/Print/?id=99285
Cheers, k hanly
Blog: http://kenthink7.blogspot.com/index.html Blog: http://kencan7.blogspot.com/index.html
--- On Sun, 6/28/09, Joanne Landy <joanne.landy at igc.org> wrote:
> From: Joanne Landy <joanne.landy at igc.org>
> Subject: [lbo-talk] Tell them we are democrats (was: freedom to swim)
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Sunday, June 28, 2009, 5:31 PM
> Selling Iran: Ahmadinejad,
> Privatization and a Bus Diver Who Said No
> by Billy Wharton
> Dissident Voice/ June 28th, 2009
> http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/06/selling-iran-ahmadinejad-privatization-and-a-bus-diver-who-said-no/
>
> A creeping assumption lies just beneath the surface of
> arguments concerning the disputed election in Iran.
> Incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is cast as an anti-US populist
> crusader resisting the materialistic advances of the West.
> His opponent, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, as his foil a
> Western-backed liberal intent on implementing free-market
> policies. Violent street battles have been presented as a
> re-enforcement of the Western disposition to see the two
> idealized positions as the limit of what is politically
> imaginable. Such arguments conveniently avoid a third
> force the people of Iran, whose street politics
> threaten to move well beyond the confines of the electoral
> campaigns. Questions remain. Is Ahmadinejad really a
> populist the only force preventing a wave of
> pro-market policies in Iran? Does Mousavi's campaign mark
> the limits of the reform movement?
>
> Since his election in 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, under the
> guidance of the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, has
> overseen a regime dedicated to the privatization of
> state-controlled industries. The intention of the regime, as
> stated by the newly appointed Governor of the Bank of the
> Islamic Republic of Iran, Seyyed Shams Al-din Hosseini, is
> to privatize 80% of state-owned industries by 2010. This
> mandate was made real just prior to the disputed elections
> as a state-owned bank, Saderat, announced it would offer 6%
> of its shares to private investors (Press TV, 6/8/09). Other
> significant privatizations during Ahmadinejad's reign
> include the postal service, two other state-run banks,
> Tejerat and Mellat, and, in February 2008, a 5% bloc of
> shares in the publicly owned steel maker, Foulad-e
> Mobarakeh, was sold out in eight minutes (Iran Daily,
> 2/14/08). In total, since 2005, 247 enterprises have been
> processed by the Iran Privatization Organization, the
> state-ministry specifically charged with overseeing
> privatizations (Iranian Privatization Organization
> website).
>
> Khamenei has propelled the process forward. While
> Ahmadinejad crafted just enough populist rhetoric to provide
> headlines, the Supreme Leader issued a letter in 2006
> ordering the sell-off of banking, mining, industrial, and
> transport companies 80% across the board.
> Ahmadinejad's ministers have aggressively followed suit. In
> September 2008, Labor Minister Mohammad Jahromi described
> the fact that so many of the country's resources are located
> in the public sector as an "obstacle" to growth (Iran Daily,
> 9/29/08). Heidari Kord-Zangeneh, Ahmadinejad's deputy
> finance minister and head of the Iran Privatization
> Organization, drew pro-market policies together with the
> myth of anti-imperialism. "We are going to activate our
> private sector and our private banks," he exclaimed, "in
> order to fight against these [US] sanctions." He punctuated
> this with a pre-election promise, "I promise that if I am
> here for the next two years, between 80 and
> 90 percent of the government will be sold" (Iran Daily,
> 2/12/08).
>
> Ahmadinejad's supposed anti-Western approach stops short
> when it comes to allowing foreign investors to penetrate
> Iran's economy. His Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance
> Davoud Danesh-Jafari boasted at a 2008 meeting of the
> Islamic Development Bank that foreign direct investment in
> Iran had increased by 138% since 2007. (Iran Daily, 2/17/08)
> Some 80 projects had been initiated during that period. Key
> to this capital penetration was the 2004 acceptance of the
> International Monetary Fund's (IMF) Article VIII Obligations
> (IMF Press Release, 9/14/04). Under this provision, Iran
> agreed to refrain from imposing restrictions on currency
> transactions and other elements essential to capital flow.
>
> While Ahmadinejad has been the implementer of privatization
> policies, the reform camp was its architects. Central to
> this process was the creative violation of Article 44 of the
> Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This article
> mandates that key sectors of the economy remain in public
> hands. It represented the radical-populist edge of the 1979
> Islamic Revolution. Parliamentary legislation in 2004, near
> the end of the regime of reformer Mohammad Khatami, created
> the first breech in Article 44. The legislation called for a
> "change in the role of government from direct ownership and
> management of enterprises to policymaking, guidance and
> overseeing" (Iranian Privatization Organization website).
> The one consistent voice pushing this process forward is
> Khamenei, whose tenure as Supreme Leader encompasses both
> reformer and populist presidential regimes.
>
> The IMF has hailed this process describing Iran in a 2007
> position paper as, "Managing the Transition to a Market
> Economy." The Fund has had a constant presence in the
> country since 1945, surviving even the turbulent 1979
> Islamic Revolution. IMF officials have employed the usual
> equation of debt and technical assistance to enforce their
> pro-market agenda. The next phase, according to IMF
> planners, of market transition is to "curb the growth of
> internal demand" through the reduction of state subsidies.
> Ahmadinejad's Central Bank appointee, Al-din Hosseini,
> indicated a shared sentiment, "The government plans to
> implement a strategy that involves significant reforms, the
> most important of which is the reform aimed at better
> subsidy system" (IMF Meeting, 10/13/08).
>
> Pro-market privatizations have been combined with harsh
> restrictions on worker's ability to organize in order to
> advance Ahmadinejad's neo-liberal restructuring of Iran.
> Although Iran is technically a member of the International
> Labor Organization, and thereby mandated to allow free trade
> unions, workers are restricted from forming independent
> unions. Under the constitution, they are only allowed to
> join ideologically-centered Islamic Worker's Councils, which
> hold no right to deal with worksite issues or collectively
> bargain. Despite these legal restrictions, privatization and
> soaring inflation have resulted in a series of escalating
> confrontations between workers and security forces.
>
> In March 2007, thousands of schoolteachers spilled out into
> the streets in front of Parliament demanding that their
> collective grievances be heard and their salaries increased.
> They were attacked by security forces and their leaders
> received prison sentences of up to five years. Such
> repression did not deter Mahmoud Salehi, a baker, from
> making his annual demand to celebrate May Day. Salehi was
> found guilty of "acting against national security" and
> imprisoned. This year, in a small preview of the
> post-election street protests, Ahmadinejad's security
> apparatus was used to repress 2,000 workers who attempted to
> organize a May Day celebration.
>
> But the real foil to Ahmadinejad's pro-market policies is a
> middle-aged bus driver from Tehran. Mansour Osanloo, acting
> as the president of the 17,000 worker-strong Syndicate of
> Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company, led a 2005 strike
> in which drivers refused to accept fares in protest of
> working conditions and rising fares. The strike was
> immediately criminalized with Osanloo and fellow leaders
> placed under arrest. Undeterred, Osanloo led another strike
> attempt in 2006. He was again arrested and today sits in a
> cell in Iran's notorious Evin prison a living
> testament to both the courage of Iranian workers and the
> repressive nature of the regime.
>
> Soon to be joining Osanloo in Evin are thousands of
> protesters who have also been criminalized by Ahmadinejad
> and Khamenei's regime because of their protests over the
> stolen election. While it is difficult to describe a
> candidate with as many establishment credentials as Mousavi
> as a reformer, it is easy to see how the demonstrations on
> the street have rapidly progressed beyond his campaign.
> Slogans have moved from "Mousavi get our votes back" to
> "Death to the Dictator." With this shift come possibilities
> for more radical measures. Automotive workers at Khodro
> Automobile Company have pledged resistance, university
> students are conducting sit-ins, and the Bus Drivers Union
> has issued a call for international solidarity.
>
> Meanwhile, somewhere deep inside Evin prison, clandestine
> communications may be being initiated between a jailed bus
> driver and a newly minted student radical or an ailing baker
> and young rock-throwing worker. These actors need little
> help in understanding that Ahmadinejad's regime, despite all
> his populist rhetoric, has worked hand-in-hand with IMF
> privatizers. After failing to deliver on his populist
> rhetoric, Ahmadinejad has stolen the election. Now, his only
> recourse is state repression. On the streets, something far
> more brilliant is underway an open-ended emancipation
> project demanding nothing less than political freedom.
>
>
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