Brotherhood to hold elections in six months

AMMAN — The newly registered Muslim Brotherhood association in Jordan has said it will conduct elections after six months to select a new leadership that will replace the incumbent interim leaders. 

The Muslim Brotherhood witnessed over the past weeks one of its worst crises since its inception around 70 years ago, after authorities approved a re-registration application filed by the reformist wing in the largest opposition group.

The move led automatically to ousting a hawkish leadership that is fighting back to regain power.

Abdul Majeed Thneibat, the current overall leader of the new body, said the association is currently addressing members of the former group to explain reasons for re-registering the association as a Jordanian group.

“This will take time,” he said, adding that there is a campaign against the new body “ in a bid to send the wrong messages about the reasons for the relicensing”.

Meanwhile, Thneibat, who sought and succeeded in separating the Jordanian branch of the Brotherhood from its Egypt mother group after decades of presence in that capacity, said that “because we have registered as a Jordanian entity, we are accused by some rivals of marginalising the Palestinian cause and use this to lobby against us”.

“Defending the Palestinian cause is a priority for us, but this does not mean we have to ignore issues of national concern,” Thneibat told The Jordan Times Tuesday over the phone after his group issued late Monday a statement to explain its stand.

Meanwhile, the old division of the group is still insisting that the new leadership is illegitimate according to the statute of the older group.

In a press release sent to The Jordan Times, Muath Khawaldeh, the old division’s spokesperson, said in reference to the statement issued by Thneibat’s group, “we stress that this group has nothing to do with the Muslim Brotherhood”, which “does not pay any attention to whatever is issued by any other party”.

Muslim Brotherhood-Jordan was licensed in 1946 as a charity affiliated with the mother group in Egypt and relicensed in 1953 as an Islamic society.