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Ceremonies Begin Khatami's Second Mandate as President
TEHRAN, Aug 2 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Ceremonies started in Tehran Thursday to confirm Mohammad Khatami as president of the Islamic Republic of Iran for a second term, Iran's official news agency (IRNA) reported.
Senior Iranian officials gathered early Thursday in Tehran to witness Khatami assuming the mandate for his second four-year term in office.
The Islamic republic's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, handed over a decree to Khatami allowing him to begin his second and last term in office.
Among those present were former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who initially handed the decree over to Khamenei before it was signed and submitted to Khatami.
The ceremony was broadcast live on nationwide radio and TV.
"For certain, the confirmation of your decree is valuable as long as you are on the right path towards Islam and defend the underprivileged and resist the oppressors," the supreme leader said in a part of the decree read aloud during the ceremony, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
Iran's president is "directly responsible before the people," Khatami told the hundreds of political personalities and members of the diplomatic corps present at the ceremony.
"The president of the republic is certainly responsible to the supreme leader and the parliament, but he is above all directly responsible to the people," Khatami said, adding that the regime should "recognize the people's right to protest and criticism".
"The people have the right to pose questions, to know, to criticize and to protest," he said, while noting that the "president of the republic is the second state personality" after the supreme leader.
"Control, criticism and protests constitute an undeniable right of the people," the 57-year-old leader said.
Khatami recalled that the "Islamic regime is based on Islamic law, but also on the values of republicanism," AFP added.
"Our regime is compatible with Islamic and republican values," he said. "That is called religious democracy."
Khatami was re-elected on June 8th with 77% of the vote. The nine other mostly conservative challengers shared the remaining percentage.
He garnered 21,659,053 out of a total of 28,160,394 votes cast. Election turnout was at 67%, down from 83% in 1997, in which Khatami acquired 69% of the total votes.
Three days following Ayatollah Khamenei's approval, Khatami will show up in the reformist-majority parliament (Majlis) for the swearing in ceremony. Within two weeks after being sworn in, Khatami should introduce his next cabinet to the Majlis for a vote of confidence, IRNA said.
Speculations are rife over the make-up of Khatami's new cabinet. Reformist MPs have ruled out the idea of forming a cabinet that contains a spectrum of mainstream political parties of the country, saying "meritocracy" should be the criteria for choosing new ministers.
Khatami himself has vowed that the economy would be the top priority in his new administration.
Several of allies have advised Khatami to avoid choosing ministers with probable extremist views, while Khatami himself has invited all political groups of the country to practice moderation and shun violence.
Sources close to Khatami have said that the president was looking to pick deputies and ministers from among more pragmatic forces, irrespective of their political inclinations.
But some of allies have said that parliament, which is mainly dominated by pro-reform MPs, would cast votes of confidence only to those who have proven their commitments to Khatami's objectives, IRNA added.
Reformists had feared that anything less than the mandate Khatami won four years ago could be seized upon by the nation's powerful conservatives as a sign that support was waning for his agenda of delivering unprecedented social and political reforms.
The president's powers are dwarfed by those of the supreme leader; and with no control over the courts, army or police, Khatami has seen his ambitious agenda for change foiled by conservative clerics in his previous term.
Conservatives have charged that Khatami's relaxation of social restrictions, especially on women, is undermining the Islamic foundations of the regime and tempting youth, who make up two-thirds of the population, away from Islam.
But although the popular head of state romped to a second landslide victory, Khatami admitted on numerous occasions during his first four-year term that the task of carrying out reforms would not be easy, and that his reform movement had paid a "heavy price" if any change were to occur, AFP reported.
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