July 1, 2009
E`temad-e Melli‘s Political Group: Members of the [Majlis] National Security and Foreign Policy Commission went to visit the president of the reformist government [Sayyed Mohammad Khatami] to say what they had to say and hear Sayyed Mohammad Khatami’s concerns. And so, while the president of the reformist government served as host to the members of this commission, he indicated his chief concern, i.e., the loss of public confidence. But the president of the reformist government did not only express his concern, but offered a way out of this dilemma and reiterated his previous position, i.e., insisted on the formation of an impartial body to solve the electoral dispute. After the elections for the tenth presidency of the republic were held and numerous difficulties ensued, Sayyed Mohammad Khatami called the formation of such a commission essential for resolving the differences. Of course, this suggestion was pretty much overlooked. But in the presence of the members of the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, which had previously visited Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, Nateq Nuri, Mehdi Karoubi, Mir Hosein Musavi, and Mohsen Reza’i, the president of the reformist government needed to emphasize the need to form an impartial body and his belief that it the only way to solve the electoral dispute, while changing the society’s security atmosphere. Of course, Sayyed Mohammad Khatami considered the Commission members’ efforts taken out of concern to solve the existing problems and said, “I consider myself a devoted child of the revolution. I have always loved the Imam [Ayatollah Khomeini] and remain so.” The president of the reformist government elaborated, “For me, order is a sacred matter which was the outcome of the principle religious and popular revolution for which I have sacrificed.” The president of the Baran Foundation1, pointing his explanation he had given the previous year in the course of some meetings of the bases of his reformist ideas, he declared, “In some expressions of my ideas which I explained, I said that the reformist movement is a movement which has arisen in our society over a century ago and which we have seen reached its zenith during the Islamic Revolution, and the fruit of the Islamic Revolution, in turn, is the Islamic Republic.” And of course, Sayyed Mohammad Khatami considers deviation from the Islamic Republic’s values a cause of weakening the system, and has said as much: “The difference which the Imam and our revolution has with other movements is that the Islamic Revolution gave birth to the Islamic Republic, and I believe that one of the means of weakening the system is to distort the Islamic Republic’s values from within. It is natural that foreigners, too, intend to damage these achievements, too.” He added, “When the Islamic Revolution appeared, a reality appeared in the midst of social life, and it was that fundamentalism and a focus on values was posed, and this led to the question of what we are defending. The answer is clear, we are defending the Islamic Republic, just as the late Imam said and as it appears in the Constitution.”Click here to see the rest of the article.
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Khatami then posed the following question: What do we mean by “system” when we say, “We are defending the system.” How and what are we defending? Damage to this system means that something had been done so that damage has been done to the Islamic Republic with all its necessities, among them having the people being at its focus.
The president of the reformist era called damage to the people being the focus in the country the most serious kind of damage and said, “Your Servant considers Engineer Musavi to be made of the wealth of the revolution’s piety, principle, and values and his entering the field to be a valuable opportunity.” The eighth president of the republic considered the people’s excitement over the tenth [presidential] elections unprecedented and declared, “The enthusiasm which existed in these elections did not exist in any of the other elections, and Your Servant, too, played a role in creating this excitement. When Your Servant left the field, many friends complained, but at the beginning of the revolution’s fourth decade, a great atmosphere has been created and the slogan of boycotting the elections was either not heard or was not taken seriously.” Khatami considered one of the issues that concerned him was the damage to public confidence in a significant part of the population, saying, “We must prevent the decline of public confidence so that the system’s principle not suffer harm, for the urgency of this issue is much greater than the question of who will be president. The answer to the logical protests and the civil behavior of society and vast portions who have problems with these elections is not the creation of a security atmosphere or exercising force and arrests and improper accusations against the people and respected personalities turns the the matter from its course. The way to restore confidence, too, has been stated. Go and try to put this solution into effect.” He continued, “In any case, something happened, a number of people have protested it, and the problems must be eliminated and the people satisfied that this problem can be solved by forming an impartial body.” The president of the reformist government emphasized, “The present security and police atmosphere, too, must change and society must be calmed. I believe that that not every road is yet closed.”
Of course, Sayyed Mohammad Khatami believed that the existence of certain considerations is an obstacle to being able to say what happened in his conversation with the Great Person of the Leadership [Ayatollah Khamene'i], but at the same time, he emphasised that the system’s principle is what is important for us, saying, “An atmosphere must exist in which everyone can speak his mind freely, there must be an atmosphere in which we can be certain in the future that the people will enter the field.”
The president of the reformist government explained, “Fundamentalism and reformism must find meaning anew and the wise of the people surely can find common ground.” Sayyed Mohammad Khatami declared, “We can get along and present a new understanding of the situation we have in this world and, by creating a balance between the forces existing in society and arriving at a more logical solution in the service of the revolution, have Islam and the system take a step forward.”
Footnotes
1 Literally “the Rain Foundation.” A foundation presided over by Sayyed Mohammad Khatami, devoted to his reformist ideas and ideas for developing the country.
http://www.etemaad.ir/Released/88-04-10/150.htm#150650
Comment
Sayyed Mohammad Khatam’s speech turns on a clever manipulation of the word for fundamentalism in Persian, which is osulgara’i, osul (sing. asl) meaning principle. He then identifies the “principle” which is the basis of the Islamic Revolution, which he finds in the Islamic Republic (the revolution’s fruit), which, in turn (being a republic) is the “principle” of popular confidence in the republic, without which it could not survive.
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