A lawmaker criticized President Hassan Rouhani’s Cabinet nominees for failing to represent the moderate agenda expected of his government.
“The political composition of the proposed Cabinet fails to reflect Rouhani’s moderate attitude,” Mahmoud Sadeqi said in a talk with ICANA on Saturday. Rouhani’s all-male lineup came despite his electoral vows of increasing the role of women in his government. Sadeqi particularly questioned the qualifications of Rouhani’s picks for the education, culture and interior ministries. “The Cabinet’s nominees to run the domestic cultural and education policies fall short of the expectations of the 24 million people who voted for Rouhani. The education minister is less qualified than his predecessor and no nominee has been introduced for the Science Ministry. The standards of reformism have been compromised in the Culture Ministry,” the reformist parliamentarian said. Rouhani has named Seyyed Abbas Salehi for Culture Ministry and Mohammad Bat’haei for Education Ministry.
Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, who is known to be a principlist, has been renamed as interior minister.
