Jordan… Morocco as Head of the Liberal Freedom Network

Morocco was chosen to chair the Liberal Freedom Network, which held its founding meeting Saturday, in Jordan, in the presence of liberal parties in the Middle East and North Africa.

It was unanimously agreed during this meeting to choose Mohamed El Gharass, member of the national council of Popular Movement, as head of the network, while the leader of the Lebanese Future Movement, Mustapha Allouch, was chosen as vice-president.

The network seeks to “promote universal values of freedom, rule of law, democracy, free market economy and economic prosperity, and work to develop member parties and organizations through various methods including mentoring, following best practices, capacity-building and empowerment by entrenching liberal principles, and increasing the participation of the MENA region in global exchange of values and ideas”.

El Gharass said, in a statement to MAP, that the establishment of this network comes as a culmination of a process that the established parties have started since 2019, as they decided to create a framework for working together to spread universal values of human rights, democracy, the rule of the state of right and law, and spread liberal values with full respect for the region’s specifics And constitutional controls, as well as spreading a culture of peace and coexistence and supervising youth.

He added that the network constitutes a platform for the exchange of experiences between these parties in the region, to bring together views on some issues of concern to the region, and seeks to open up to successful Arab and international experiences, noting that a road map had been drawn up to open the way for the rest of the living forces that share the same liberal values to join this organization, and to start work on institutionalizing relations between the region’s parties and unifying views on a number of issues.

On the other hand, he stressed that not framing youth, which constitutes a real opportunity for economic and social change and development in the region, and directing them and providing them with universal values, may turn this opportunity into a real threat to the region in the future, in the event that these young people fall between the clutches of extremism, hatred and populism.

The meeting, which was held both in attendance and via videoconference, featured the participation of the founding parties of the network represented by the Future Movement (Lebanon), the Popular Movement and the Constitutional Union (Morocco), Afaq Tunis (Tunisia), and Free Egyptians (Egypt).