AMMAN —
A number of
senators,
representatives, former ministers, retired army officers,
and former officials announced the registration of the National Charter Party
on Thursday, in what is viewed as the most recent attempt to form a centrist
and broad-based loyalist political party in the wake of the adoption of
constitutional amendments last week that will pave the way for the formation of
parliamentary governments in the future.
اضافة اعلان
The list of
founders includes 48 parliamentarians, nine of whom are senators and 39
deputies, and former ministers, as well as former lawmakers, academics,
businessmen, and political and national figures. Almost all founding members
are holding or held official positions, making the new party elitist, according
to critics.
The new party was
quickly criticized by pundits as being the party of the state and a recycling
of past experiments to create pro-government political entities. It is
interesting to note that the announcement of the registration of the new party
was made even before Parliament had a chance to debate the draft political
parties and elections laws proposed by the
Royal Committee to Modernize the Political System.
The new party is
expected to draw members of other political parties, now numbering over 50, in
order to create a platform that would compete against the Islamists in future
elections.
Senator Talal
Al-Shorafat, one of the founders of the new party, told Ammon News that it took
three years of discussions and contacts with Jordanians from all walks of life
for the new party to emerge.
He added that
organized institutional and collective action is the only guarantee that
political life raises to levels that serve the country and restore the bright
image of its institutions.
To say that the
National Charter Party is the creation of the government is incorrect, the
senator said.
The reality of the
party’s work and the struggle of its founders, who include members who have
various political positions on the government’s work and programs, is that it
proceeds from a dynamic that transcends people and focuses on programs.
Shorafat called on
citizens to join the party to enhance political participation and move from
individual work to organized and collective work that is based on programs.
Pundits reacted to
the registration of the new party by saying that Jordanians can see for
themselves who the new party represents. Former Editor-in-Chief of Ad-Dustour
daily Mohammed Al-Tall wrote in Ammon News that times have changed and that
producing parties from inside the authority no longer works.
Tall said that
those who formed the new party can only be viewed as progeny of the system.
Columnist Iyad
Al-Waqfi wrote on the same site that Jordanians want political parties that
come out of the grassroots to truly represent them and not those who represented
the state.
Political analyst Mohammed
Turki Bani Salamah wrote for JO24 that the deep state had moved from forging
elections results to engineering political parties.
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