Mehdi Karroubi asks for adherence to Iranian constitution
Mehdi Karroubi, in case you haven’t been following Iranian politics for a while, is an influential Iranian reformist politician, democracy activist, mojtahed, and chairman of the National Trust Party. He was Chairman of the parliament from 1989 to 1992 and 2000 to 2004, and a presidential candidate in the 2005 and 2009 presidential elections. He is also an outspoken critic against Ahmadinejad and the current suspected take over by the Revolutionary Guard.
Karroubi recently gave a lengthy and detailed interview to the British Press which is well worth reading in full, but in essence he once again called for the Supreme Leader to oust Ahmadinejad and for the Tehran powers to uphold justice and the constitution in the country.
Now aged 73, he says Khomeini’s Islamic revolution has been wrenched off track by the regime’s contempt for democracy. And he accuses the country’s authorities of using torture and rape against their political prisoners…
“We will ask, in accordance with article 27 of constitution, to have a peaceful demonstration, in order to show the people’s support for our movement.
If they don’t let us have that, we will have to try different methods to talk and educate the people about the peace movement and extend it to the whole country.
We want to maintain our peaceful demands in accordance with the constitution. But we don’t want the people to pay the high price.
Presently the state shows less tolerance and tries to use violence against the people. Many young people are in prison and have received unacceptable sentences. There is no way to back away from the people’s rights. But we have to find a proper way to ask the people’s rights and put the revolution back on track, without letting them divert the Islamic republic from its main goals with great cost to the people.
And we will talk to the people about our programme in the near future. Mr Mousavi and I will have a meeting in the near future and will let the people know about our strategy and work. The meeting might be sometime this week.
Our priorities are the release of the many prisoners without any condition and free elections without monitoring by the Guardian Council [an unelected body that can veto candidates]. The last thing is the creation of a good atmosphere for a free press recognition of the right to criticise. The current atmosphere, dominated by fear and police control must be removed and we must create a situation where all the people come together and present their ideas about the future of the state. It is the people’s right to choose. In the view of Khomeini, the most important thing was the vote of the people.”
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