Ouahbi announces candidacy for SG of Morocco’s main opposition party

RABAT – Lawyer and deputy Abdellatif Ouahbi announced his candidacy Thursday for the post of Secretary General of Morocco’s main opposition party of Authenticity and Modernity (PAM), calling for his party’s “disengagement” from the State.

Ouahbi presented his candidacy programme in a press conference in Rabat which he said was completely different from that of his challenger Mohamed Cheikh Biadillah.

He believed that his party’s behaviour towards events and political actors has remained marked by a kind of reductionism which manifests itself by putting all the efforts and the available potential, as if it existed only to face the wave of political Islam.

“The role of a democratic party is to present a project for society, an alternative, to the project of the conservative forces,” said Ouahbi.

“Between democratic struggle and reconsideration of PAM position vis-à-vis the Party of Justice and Development, a politician first thinks of diversifying his allies.

“The state reason requires in-depth analysis to deal with political actors without taboos or intellectual inertia,” he added.

Ouahbi called for his party’s “disengagement” from the State, promising a new approach backed by a new political discourse.

The PAM has been mired in frictions for several months that have dragged the party into an unprecedented crisis.

Secretary General Hakim Benchemach dismissed Ahmed Akchichine, president of the Marrakech-Safi region, for sowing division and amplifying tensions in the party.  

Akchichine was appointed in January 2019 to the PAM political bureau with a mission to lead implementation of a plan Benchamach had introduced to unite the party around a single project. A few months later,  Benchamach accused Akchichine, one of the party’s founders, of failing to advance the road map and acting against party reunification.