Sudan ruling party reformers to set up 'new party'

Three leading reformers, who Sudan's ruling party is trying to expel, have decided to break away and form a new party, one of them said today.
"We decided to establish a new party carrying the hopes of the Sudanese people," Fadlallah Ahmed Abdallah, an MP with the governing National Congress Party (NCP), told AFP.
"We have already put in motion a plan to establish this party."
The name and structure of the new organisation will be revealed within one week, Abdallah added.
On Thursday, an internal NCP investigative committee ruled that Abdallah, former sports minister Hassan Osman Riziq, and ex-presidential adviser Ghazi Salahuddin Atabani should be ousted after they signed a memorandum criticising the regime's deadly crackdown on protests last month.

Atabani was the lead signatory but 30 other prominent reformers also signed the memorandum sent to President Omar al-Bashir, which they made public.

They charged the government's response to the demonstrations over fuel price hikes betrayed the regime's Islamic foundations.
Abdallah, a former engineering commissioner in West Darfur state, said all the signatories of the memorandum planned to join the new party.
"The members of parliament in our group are going to resign," he added.
Atabani and Riziq also currently serve as NCP legislators.