Brotherhood defectors ponder how to attract youth to their planned parties

AMMAN — Three groups of Islamist reformists who have quit the Muslim Brotherhood and its political arm, the Islamic Action Front (IAF) are facing challenges to their plans to found new political parties.

Hundreds have resigned from both the Muslim Brotherhood movement and the IAF, including a group led by Rheil Gharaibeh, who established the moderate Zamzam Initiative. There are also the recently registered Muslim Brotherhood Society and a third splinter faction dubbed the Elders Group led by Hamzeh Mansour. Their defections have dealt a heavy blow to the conservative old guard.  

Members of both Zamzam and the new Society said they would each establish a new political party they described as a national party, hinting they would accept members from across the board.

However, Gharaibeh, who is leading the efforts and meetings to discuss the mechanism for establishing the planned party, said the challenge lies in coming up with new ideas that might distinguish the entity from the existing ones.

“We are holding consultations for that purpose, but still need more time,” Gharaibeh told The Jordan Times over the phone.

He added, however, that another major challenge is how to attract young people to join the party.

There are 38 political parties in Jordan, he noted, and “if we cannot come up with something that is attractive to young people”, the party will not be a success.

Khaled Hassanain, the Elders Group spokesperson, agreed with Gharaibeh that the major challenge is how to attract youth.

He said the “economy” is the main concern for young people.

“Due to the current economic challenges, the young people are only concerned with how to find job opportunities,” Hassanain told The Jordan Times.

However, he added, the political environment in Jordan is not encouraging and joining political parties is not a priority for the younger generation.

“The [draft] elections law only gives a small share for political parties’ members to be represented in Parliament, and this is not encouraging,” Hassanain said, adding that if there were a real political reform, this might encourage not only youth but Jordanians in general to be more active in political parties.

The spokesperson revealed that researchers have been recruited by the group to conduct several studies on the feasibility and prospects of success for the envisioned party before taking major steps.

Meanwhile, Gharaibeh added that fear of being believed to have a regional affiliation poses as another issue to address before going ahead with the plan.

He said that historically, people believe that political parties are affiliated with regional movements, which makes it not easy to convince citizens to join parties.

Thus, he added, if the planned party is to succeed, “we have to focus on programmes rather than ideology”.

Khaled Kalaldeh, Minister of Political Development and Parliamentarian Affairs, agrees that it is challenging to attract the young people to join political parties, “but Jordan is not alone in this”.

The challenge is global, even in countries that have mature political parties, he said.

Disagreeing with Hassanain, the minister, a veteran politician and partisan activist himself, argued that the economic challenge might be an incentive for the youth to join political parties and political life in general, noting that “those who come up with the economic policies are the politicians”.

Another reason that discourages the young people from being involved in politics, according to the minister, is the experience in some countries that witnessed revolts led by youth that ended up hijacked by traditional leaderships.

Returning to Jordan, where 75 per cent of its population is under 35 years old, the minister said that politicians are challenged to convince the youth that political activism is the right choice and the path for change and a better future.