Iran's judiciary chief has publicly criticised President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for needlessly changing top officials, in a rare intervention in politics by one of Iran's most respected clerics, media reported on Thursday.
The criticism by Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi comes in the same week the president unexpectedly replaced his oil and industry ministers, amid continued economic problems in Iran. "Unfortunately, the treatment of some managers is the source of heavy blows to the Iranian system," Shahroudi said in a speech to the Iranian audit court on Wednesday reported by the ISNA agency and picked up by all moderate newspapers. "If we repeatedly change managers and ministers, nothing will improve," he said. "It should not be done in a way that if we want to groom an eyebrow we end up by poking out the eye," Shahroudi commented, using a traditional Persian proverb. |