The President of Iran is due to face a vote of no confidence following a ministerial scandal over a forged Oxford University degree.The turmoil follows the sacking of the Government’s Interior Minister this week, after revelations over the summer that his Law degree was in fact a fake.
Ali Kordan was officially dismissed from his cabinet post last Tuesday on charges of dishonesty and lying about his educational record, after months of political wrangling.
He had initially denied the allegations of forgery and copies of the degree were even released onto the internet in an effort to prove its legitimacy.
However Iranian political blogs soon exposed that the diploma was indeed a crude fake, riddled with spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.
An official statement released by Oxford University later confirmed that the Interior Minister had never received any type of commendation from the institution, leading to 20 Iranian Government ministers to call for Kordan’s impeachment after he admitted the degree was indeed a forgery. An overwhelming majority of Iranian MPs subsequently voted to dismiss Kordan, with just 45 of 247 members voting that he should keep his job.
President faces vote of confidence
The affair could have additional consequences for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who now faces a vote on his own future after Kordan became the tenth government minister to be sacked during his tenure in office.
According to Iran’s constitution, the expulsion of ten ministers should trigger a vote of confidence in the President – which would make Ahmadinejad the first President in Iranian history to ever face such a vote.
However, the Iranian sumpreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei condemned the attempts to undermine his country’s government.
He told the BBC, “This careless atmosphere of talking against the government is not to be easily forgiven by God.” His remarks appear to be directed against those who have impeached Kordan and came as implicit support for Ahmadinejad’s government.
Inflation at a high
The controversy comes at an especially bad time for Ahmadinejad as Iran is to hold a presidential election in just eight month’s time. The country is currently experiencing its own version of the international economic crisis as inflation is at a high of 30% and oil prices are continuing to drop.
The Iranian President, who defended Kordan when the allegations against him emerged last August, has refused to speak further on the issue and did not attend the vote to impeach the Interior Minister.
A spokesperson for Oxford University said this week that they would not be commenting again on the matter. They had previously confirmed that the academics who ‘signed’ the diploma had all held Oxford posts, but never in the field of Law, and they would never have signed degree diplomas either.
