Zakani, the brazen and inefficient non-mayor
Zakani, the brazen and inefficient non-mayor, according to Iran Gate, Azari Jahromi’s tweet directed at Zakani is one of those historical phrases that could be recorded in history forever. It’s clear that in the future, this period will be referenced, and Zakani’s term as mayor will be remembered as the appointment of a brazen and incompetent non-mayor in Behesht Street.
The sharp response from Hamshahri newspaper, which has turned into Zakani’s personal page, to the tweet by Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi, the Minister of Communications under Hassan Rouhani’s government, has recently faced reactions from users on social media. These reactions indicate the anger and concern of the people regarding the performance of Ebrahim Raisi’s government and Alireza Zakani in the position of Tehran’s mayor.
Who is a non-mayor?
Iran Gate looked at the list of mayors of the world’s largest cities and found that there is no metropolis globally managed by someone with unrelated education. The only exception is Iran’s capital, which has been placed in the incapable hands of someone whose education is in nuclear medicine.
Although Iran Gate has previously addressed the multiple ambiguities in Alireza Zakani’s academic credentials, even assuming these credentials are flawless, it can be said that appointing Alireza Zakani to the position of Tehran’s mayor is a wrong and unreasonable decision. Moreover, this action by the city council is illegal and illegitimate because the charter of this body strongly emphasizes the necessity of the mayor’s education being related to urban management, and ignoring it is considered a breach of the law. Therefore, it is said that Zakani’s appointment to this position is completely illegal and illegitimate.
This is why the term ‘non-mayor’ is used to describe the state of the Tehran municipality under Zakani’s leadership. Naturally, a non-mayor is someone who, without the slightest expertise in urban management, sits at a desk that has been occupied by great figures like Khalil Saqafi in 1910, Arslan Khelatbari in 1951, Ahmad Nafisi in 1962, Seyyed Ziauddin Shadman in 1965, Mohammad Ali Safari in 1952, 1953, 1967, Gholamreza Nikpey from 1969 to 1978, Mohammad Tavassoli in 1979, Gholamhossein Karbaschi from 1989 to 1998, and Morteza Alviri in 1999.
Even many conservatives believe that Zakani is not only not up to the level of the great mayors Tehran has seen, but also cannot be considered on par with figures like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf by conservative standards, individuals who had extremely controversial performances in Tehran’s municipality and are recognized as weak mayors of Tehran.
What did Azari Jahromi mean?
About a month ago, one of the governing bodies reported the critical condition of over 16,000 buildings in Tehran. This news, which exploded in the media like a bomb, heightened concerns about the capital’s situation in facing crises like earthquakes.
The tweet by the former Minister of Communications of the Islamic Republic of Iran also refers to this news because Zakani had previously said that we must demolish all unsafe buildings. The disaster that occurred in Khalazir was due to the controlled demolition of illegal buildings. However, despite the evacuation of these buildings, five compatriots lost their lives, and it is said that many Afghan migrants were buried in the basement of one of these buildings, but the municipality made no mention of this disaster.
However, Azari Jahromi, by referring to this disaster and comparing it with the statistics related to unsafe buildings in Tehran, considered the danger of having a non-mayor on Behesht Street to be greater than the presence of unsafe buildings in the capital. He argued that if an incompetent person like Zakani had not been appointed to office, these unsafe buildings would have claimed fewer victims and a new disaster would not have occurred.
Ignore the trash, focus on the billboard
One of Iran Gate’s readers, who resides in Tehran, has provided images of the capital’s streets to the site’s journalists, indicating the inefficiency of the waste collection system in this megacity. This citizen, who lives in the Shahrak-e Gharb neighborhood, mentioned the removal of some mechanized trash bins in recent months and reported the leakage of waste leachate and the gathering of pests in this area.
On the other hand, the images show that the Tehran municipality has not collected waste at the scheduled times and regular hours, and a large amount of waste is piled up in the streets daily. As mentioned, the number of mechanized trash bins does not match the number of residential and commercial units in this area, and many report the irregular visits of municipal officers for waste collection.
This incident is yet another example of the inefficiency and incompetence of a brazen and unqualified individual in the position of mayor of Iran’s largest city. Zakani is a non-mayor whose traces can be seen not only in the ideological and childishly designed billboards across the city but now also in endangering the lives and safety of the people.
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