The Moroccan Justice and Development party seeking help from Unification and Reform Movement

In an unusual step, the leaders of the Moroccan Justice and Development Party – affiliated with the Brotherhood – which leads the current government, met with the “Unification and Reform” movement known as the party’s advocacy wing.

On January 5, 2020, Saad al-Din al-Othmani, the party’s general secretary, met with officials of the Unification and Reform Movement.

The meeting reflects a state of ambiguity in the separation of the lawsuit and the political in the Justice and Development, especially since unification and reform have been put forward for a period of time reviewing its relationship with the party at the research table.

Justice and development considers religion and his trump card, and works to exploit it, especially ahead of the upcoming parliamentary elections to be held in 2021, in front of fears that it will be difficult for Islamists to obtain the first rank in the elections.

The party, known as al-Bujaidi, resorted to unification and reform, due to its political decline, as the legislative elections in which the party leading the elections in 2016 was consecutive losses, among the 11 electoral districts, won only in one constituency in the northern city of Tetouan.

After only a few years, the popularity of the party with an Islamic authority declined, and it lost its political presence in electoral districts that were considered one of its most important strongholds.

Thus, it becomes clear that “Al-Baijidi” resorted to religious reference when needed, as it still employed religious discourse to justify civil policies. What can be explained by the lack of desire to neglect its popularity among the conservative groups within Moroccan society?

Basso Alto, president of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights in the Amelshil region of Morocco, said: The Justice and Development Party have used religious discourse to camouflage the people, because it is well aware that Moroccans are affected by the religious slogan more than anything else.

Alto added that the party, known as Al-Bajidi, was a party (people and interests), who made religion a cover for them in order to achieve their personal goals, and from the start they sought to reach power and come close to the palace.

Montaser Hamadeh, the Moroccan researcher, believes that what is happening shows the allegation of taking a distance between justice and development and the unification and reform movement, which is not considered a political tactic imposed by the stage, under a purely purely pragmatic justification. Work areas, symbols and discourse, within the framework of his party’s strategic reviews and options.

Hamadeh said in a statement to the “reference” that it is necessary to move away from the logic of blurring and political clarity in order to distinguish between advocacy and political action within justice and development, noting that the party and the movement are two sides of the same coin.

It is noteworthy that the separation of the lawsuit and the political in the Justice and Development is merely a slogan for media consumption, whose components and conditions have not yet matured, although it is a procedure that does not organizationally affect the party’s convictions and priorities that are the priorities of the movement itself, in order to consecrate the principle of distributing roles between the pillars of the project (the movement and the party).

The Justice and Development Party operates according to the ideology of the mother Brotherhood – founded by Hassan al-Banna – for which religious discourse was used as a slogan in order to serve its interests, as the group always uses religion poorly, and works hard to employ Islam to serve the organization.