By Fuad Abu Hijleh
Amman
A group of Islamists are planning to set up a new political party in Jordan. It will be the second licensed party adopting Islam as ideology after the Islamic Action Front (IAF), the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.
According to partisan and Islamist sources, the party founders used to be members of the Brotherhood who resigned or dismissed for different reasons upon verdicts by the movement’s internal court. Among those were members who accepted ministerial portfolios without the consent of the organization.
In a statement to Albawaba.com in Amman, the overall leader of the Muslim Brotherhood Abdul Majid Thuneibat charged that the party in the making is part of a plot aimed at terminating his powerful group, the largest opposition movement in Jordan.
He said that the government has succumbed to pressures from the US and Israel to eliminate or diminish the role played by the Brotherhood in the country’s political life.
He added that the one-man-one-vote electoral law was but a link in a chain of similar steps such as the drafting of the Awqaf (religious endowment) and the Municipalities laws.
The sources told Albawaba.com that the new party, suggested to be called the Islamic Unity Party, will nominate candidates for the 2001 parliamentary elections.
They added that closed-door meetings are being held in Amman and Zarqa where the founders are formulating the party’s policies regarding domestic, regional and international issues such as the peace process.
According to the same sources, who asked to remain unnamed, former minister of administrative reform, Bassam Omoush, current minister of municipal affairs Abdul Rahim Akour and former deputy Dheeb Abdullah are the key founders of the party – Albawaba.com.
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
