The new leaders of the Authenticity and Modernity Party are rushing to end the organizational arrangements that resulted from the fifth conference, in an effort to “consolidate the new formula for management” at all levels, without “leaving time to weaken the aspirations of the collective leadership,” according to an official source in the party.

This process begins by convening a national council “time before the month of Ramadan,” which begins in the second week of next March, with the sole goal of forming (the rest of) the political bureau.

The party emerged from its conference last Saturday, with a collective leadership, headed by Fatima Zahraa Al-Mansouri, and also consisting of Salah Al-Din Abu Al-Ghali and Mehdi Bensaïd. He also suddenly announced the composition of a “political office in its capacity” that includes heads of bodies and officials who hold territorial or parliamentary positions. The reason for this speed in announcing this “mini office” is the desire of the new leadership to “instill reassurance among the leaders who sought to obtain a place within the new collective leadership, and failed,” in the words of a party source.

But the collective leadership does not plan to move forward with its work supported by this “mini office,” which appears to have been inherited from the previous stage, according to party officials whom “Al-Youm 24” spoke to. Hence, pressure began from the National Council itself on the new leadership to accelerate renewal procedures at the level of the Political Bureau.

According to the party’s laws, the head of the party’s National Council, Najwa Kokos, must call a meeting of this body. Before that, the “Political Bureau as such” will meet in a meeting “which is the first as well as the last” to recommend the call for an early national council. There are leaders who are not enthusiastic about this meeting at the level of the “political office in its capacity,” but its members, in any case, will continue to hold their seats in this office even after the new members are elected by the National Council.

Party officials do not want to delay this path, to avoid repeating the scenario of 2020, when the procedure for electing the political office was disrupted for more than a year, after the National Council meeting could not be held due to the Covid epidemic, and the Secretary-General at the time, Abdel Latif Wehbe, continued his work through a mini-political office. The epidemic then postponed the holding of the National Council meeting from March 2020, as was scheduled, after the new conference in February of that year, to November 2021, that is, after the general elections.

The new leaders of the “PAM” party do not want to repeat this experience, unless the “package of ministers” dictates otherwise. The party at this stage, unlike its predecessors, is led by ministers, starting with Al-Mansouri herself, then Ben Said, and the rest of the party’s ministers, who assume leadership qualities for themselves based on their government positions.

Fearing that events may occur if the meeting is postponed until after Ramadan, the new leadership’s efforts are to speed up the convening of the National Council, in preparation for presenting the list of members of the Political Bureau, in the part that is elected by that Council. Usually in this party, the party’s Secretary General proposes a list of candidates to fill its highest executive body, and the party then votes on it.

In fact, with about half of the former members of the previous office continuing to gain their right to membership in the new office, all bets are on the “second half” of this body, which includes between 27 and 30 members.