CAIRO (BBC) -- Egyptian authorities have approved the formation of a new political party led by a former prominent member of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP). The Political Party Affairs Committee said it had licensed Osama al-Ghazali Harb to form the Democratic Front.

The front has said it stands for "democracy, the rule of law, the rotation of power and a civil society".

Harb resigned from the NDP last year, accusing it of not fulfilling its commitment to political reform.

His resignation from the party's influential Policies Committee, which is headed by President Hosni Mubarak's son, Gamal, was prompted by a series of constitutional amendments approved by referendum in March.

Mubarak had billed the constitutional amendments as a way to "strengthen political parties" and allow multi-candidate presidential elections.

But Harb said the changes would only maintain the NDP's monopoly on power, make it easier for it to rig future elections, and make it almost impossible for anyone but the party to nominate a candidate for the presidency.

Harb has said he hoped his new party would "fill the great void" which had opened between the NDP and the banned opposition Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood.

The academic and writer, who remains a member of Egypt's upper house of parliament, the Shoura Council, said in July the front would be based on building a "true and complete democratic system" and a free market economy.

He also said Egypt needed a "new social governance based on the rule of the people by the people, and which relies on the transition of power and the limitation of terms".

Another prominent member of the Democratic Front, Yahya al-Gamal, who served as a minister of social affairs in the 1970s, said the Democratic Front believed in "democracy, the rule of law, the rotation of power and a civil society".

"We believe that the silent majority, which is looking for a place, will find its place in this party," he told the Arabic satellite TV channel, al-Jazeera. (Source: BBC)