Leila Sharaf resigns from Jordanian Parliament

Jordanian Senator and former Minister of Information, Leila Sharaf, has confirmed her resignation from the Parliament’s Upper House. Sharaf has handed her resignation to the House’s head, Taher Al Masri, who attempted to persuade her to stay. Sharaf says that she has resigned because she will not be part of a “corrupt government.” She will now focus on serving Jordan through civil society institutions. Sharaf’s resignation comes just days after her son Faris was forced to resign as Chief of the Jordanian Central Bank. Sharaf claims that her son was “removed” for attempting to combat corruption. Faris had only been in the role for ten months of his five year term. Leila has expressed her displeasure with the manner in which her son was removed, claiming that the bank was surrounded by armed guards to prevent him from re-entering the building. “Somebody needs to tell me why my son was removed from his post,” she said. She expressed her dismay at the government's decision to shake up the Central Bank, which she considers "the institution that attempts to maintain the security of the nation." She said that Faris’s dismissal violated the sanctity of the Central Bank. Leila Sharaf is a former Minister of Media Affairs. She resigned from that position in 1984 over what she considered to be state encroachment on press freedoms. Her late husband, Abdul Hamid Sharaf, was a Prime Minister and held several other high positions in the state before his death in 1980.