The Party of the Civilizational Alternative ( ar, حزب البديل الحضاري ''Hizb al-Badil al-Hadari''; french: Parti de l'alternative civilisationnelle) is an Islamo-democratic

political party A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology ...

Morocco Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to ...

. In the 2007 parliamentary elections, the party did not win any seats. The party was supposedly banned in early 2008 (a few months after the 2007 elections), but as no written records exist proving it was banned, according to Moroccan law, the party is technically "frozen" rather than banned.

Structure

*Secretary-General: Mustapha Moatassim *Deputy Secretary-General: Zahira Brini *Spokesman: Mohammed El Amine Ragala

History

Founded in 2002, the party was not recognised by the Moroccan Interior Ministry until 2005. The founding principles were freedom, equality, equity and democracy. They are mobilized for the same conviction: "a real alternative to the crisis in our country is possible."

Party dissolution

Following the arrests of senior party leader following a terrorism investigation (" Belliraj network"), Prime Minister Abbas El Fassi announced on February 20, 2008 that the party would be forcibly dissolved. Both the secretary-general and the spokesman of the party were detained from February 2008 to April 14, 2011. A US diplomatic cable dated February 22, 2008 and released by

WikiLeaks WikiLeaks () is an international Nonprofit organization, non-profit organisation that published news leaks and classified media provided by anonymous Source (journalism), sources. Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activism, Internet acti ...

states that "the main arrested politicians were generally viewed as moderates, who had contacts with the Embassy", that "When we met them in the spring in 2007, the tone of their discourse was moderate, without any hints of extremism, and they had reputation of being leftist-Islamist" and that "The Moroccan Association of Human Rights (AMDH), a far-left human rights NGO that traditionally has had cool relations with Islamist political parties, criticized the GOM's '' overnment of Morocco' arrest of the politicians, calling for their release, and denouncing the banning of the Al-Badli Al-Hadari party". On April 18, 2012, Mustapha Moatassim introduced a request before Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane to lift the freeze of the party. According to the Rabat Court of Appeal, there is actually no proof to confirm the dissolution decision, no trace in the Official Bulletin, no minutes of the Administrative Court, both required according to the Law on political parties.Y.B.,
Des années après la clôture du dossier Belliraj :Résurrection du parti de Mustapha Mouatassim
", '' Au Fait Maroc'', 24 September 2012

References

{{Moroccan political parties 2002 establishments in Morocco Banned Islamist parties Islamic democratic political parties Political parties established in 2002 Political parties in Morocco