Rafaat Bayat: Opponents of the Regime Should Not Enter Parliament

While reformists have announced that most of their candidates have been disqualified, Rafaat Bayat, a former conservative member of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, states that reformists had 90 candidates in the Tehran electoral district and needed to select 30 from them. Ms. Bayat considers the protests against the results of the 2009 presidential election a red line in the approval of candidates for elections, stating: "Opponents of the regime should not come to Parliament." This former representative of the seventh term of the Islamic Consultative Assembly did not provide further explanations in response to Radio Farda's question about the disqualification of individuals who held important government positions and are now referred to as "affiliated with the sedition movement." In recent weeks, reformists have repeatedly protested the disqualification of election candidates. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani also protested the disqualification of candidates before the elections, asking all agencies involved in the election process to act in a way that would prevent any suspicion of what he called engineered elections. Rafaat Bayat believes that the ninth Parliament was "completely under the control of Hassan Rouhani's government." She adds, "Now if two or three people act harshly, that is not a barrier." Previously, Hassan Rouhani and Majid Ansari, the parliamentary deputy of the president, had criticized the large number of questions from parliament members directed at government ministers. The ninth Parliament impeached and dismissed Minister of Science Reza Faraji Dana from Hassan Rouhani's government on August 20, 2014. Additionally, representatives of the ninth Islamic Consultative Assembly, which was predominantly conservative, issued eighteen yellow cards to the ministers of the eleventh government.