Word: parliament
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...annual two-week session of the National People's Congress - China's nominal parliament - ended Friday with characteristic efficiency. The 3,000 delegates to what is effectively the legislative arm of the ruling Communist Party took less than a minute to vote in a much ballyhooed new property law, according to reports in state-controlled media. It was a speedy finish to an agonizingly long gestation for the law, which for the first time enshrines the rights of private individuals to own property...
...establishment. Early in his tenure, he sacked thousands of bureaucrats and sought to replace them with unqualified cronies. He tossed Rafsanjani and Khatami out of fancy quarters in the presidential compound that they had maintained as former officeholders. He angered members of his own party in the Majlis, or Parliament, by refusing to put their supporters on the public payroll. In response, the Majlis rejected several of Ahmadinejad's Cabinet appointees, including three nominees for the crucial post of Oil Minister...
...past decade. Last summer 50 Iranian economists wrote him a letter decrying his policies, which have frozen investment and precipitated a 26% drop in the value of the Tehran stock market. In January some of the President's former allies formed a faction to oppose him. "The Parliament today is at the point of explosion," says Mohammed Atrianfar, a Rafsanjani adviser. "The volume of criticism emanating out is unprecedented in the last century of Iranian politics...
...opposition has revolved around two figures: Mehdi Karroubi, a moderate cleric who was once Speaker of Parliament, and Rafsanjani, the powerful former President, who prizes economic growth over democracy and Islamic ideology. Ahmadinejad also has problems outside Tehran. In the holy city of Qum, south of the capital, Ahmadinejad has offended the grand ayatullahs, who act as the country's spiritual leaders. Most irritating have been his frequent allusions to his connection to the Hidden Imam, the last in a line of descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, who Shi'ites believe will return at the end of the world...
...where does that leave Ahmadinejad? The Parliament cannot on its own dump him, and he has a little over two years left in his term. Impeachment proceedings require approval of the country's Supreme Leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, who has yet to repudiate Ahmadinejad. "If Parliament senses for a second that Khamenei has withdrawn his support, the government will fall," says Atrianfar. A politician close to Rafsanjani tells Time, "Most of the decision makers and the élite are against him. If he becomes less popular, even the Supreme Leader will withdraw his support...