Morocco’s Istiqlal party elects new leader
RABAT/CASABLANCA: Morocco’s oldest political party Istiqlal has elected former Finance Minister Nizar Baraka as its new leader, the party said on its website.
On Saturday, Baraka won 924 votes, largely beating his predecessor as head of the party Hamid Chabat, who secured 234 votes.
Seen as a “man of consensus,” Baraka served as finance minister from 2012 to 2013 after years as minister of state for economic affairs.
Since 2013, he had been chairman of the official Economic, Social and Environmental Council.
His grandfather Allal El-Fassi was an emblematic nationalist figure in Morocco who in his time also headed the same party.
Baraka succeeds Chabat, a trade unionist who was seen as a troublemaker in Moroccan politics and was facing opposition within the party.
Istiqlal, which means independence, played a major role in Morocco’s fight for independence from the French and Spanish rule.
Nationalist and conservative, Istiqlal dominated Morocco’s political life until 2011, when the Justice and Development Party won general elections following Arab Springinspired protests.
In legislative elections last year, Istiqlal came third. It is not part of the current coalition.
Hundreds protest Hundreds of people from around Morocco protested on Sunday in the nation’s economic capital, Casablanca, to demand freedom for activists jailed for their roles in a protest movement that took off a year ago in a neglected northern city.
The demonstration was the latest of numerous protests demanding the liberation of activists from the city of Al Hoceima, in the northern Rif region where hundreds of protesters have been arrested.
Leading figures in the opposition movement known as Hirak will go on trial Oct. 17 in Casablanca. No trial date has been set for the movement’s leader, Nasser Zefzafi — arrested in June after a dramatic manhunt. An appeals court will decide this month whether a charge of attacking state security, which carries a risk of capital punishment, is maintained. The death sentence has not been carried out in Morocco in decades.
Up to 1,000 protesters, led by organizers perched on a pickup truck with megaphones, gathered at a main Casablanca intersection Sunday, chanting “freedom, dignity, social justice.”
“We are here to say, ‘Enough,’” said Nabila Mounib, the president of the Federation of the Democratic Left. His federation of left-wing parties has rallied to the cause. “Release the detainees and open a debate on their demands, and above all fight the corruption that gangrenes the Rif region,” Mounib said.