"Islamic State Incapable of Meeting Iranian People's Demands"

[democratic]

http://www.iran-press-service.com/ips/articles-2004/june/haqiqatjoo_interview_16604.shtml

By Delphine Minoui

It took four years for Mrs. Fatemeh Haqiqatjoo, a reformist lawmaker to reach the conclusion that an Islamic theocracy is not what the Iranians expect.

“The greatest lesson I got from my years as a parliamentarian is that an Islamic State is not capable to respond to Iranian expectations”, she told the French centrist newspaper Le Figaro, adding, “ to see our nation go forward, one has to separate religion from politics”.

An outspoken representative of Tehran in the outgoing Majles, or the Iranian Parliament that was dominated by the reformists, the Iranians knows the 36 years-old Haqiqatjoo for her bold and uncompromising positions in favour of the rights of Iranian women, students and political dissidents.

“If Mr. Khatami, who was elected thanks to more than 20 million votes, would have been a bit more a strong personality, he could have defeated the conservatives. But the fact is that he was a liability for the reform movement from the outset”, Mr. Sho’leh Sa’di told Iran Press Service during an interview immediately after the crushing defeat of the reformists at the latest legislative race.

Daring to compare the present theocracy with that of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Iranian Monarch who was toppled in 1979 by the Islamic Revolution, she told a gathering of students that “the disqualification of thousands of reformist candidates demonstrated that everything is decided by people sitting high above”.

One of the very few reformist deputies to openly defend the struggle of the students in particular and the intelligentsia in general for a more open society, Mrs. Haqiqatjoo was arrested briefly last year after she showed up at student’s demonstrations protesting the crackdown of the regime on the dissidents of all walk.