Marrakech – Abderrahim Bouaida, the member of parliament for Guelmim, announced his resignation from the Istiqlal Party on Saturday after the party declined to nominate him for the legislative elections scheduled for September. He made the decision public in a video posted to his personal Facebook page.
The break followed the party’s choice of Mohamed El Mostafa Charaf Eddine to lead its list in Guelmim. That name appeared in the first wave of Istiqlal candidates, a batch covering 70 of the kingdom’s 92 constituencies, while Bouaida’s own was left off.
Bouaida traced the snub to the critical line he kept during his term. He was paying the price, in his account, for the words he spoke, the positions he took, and the criticism he directed at the government from inside a party that belongs to the majority.
Speaking with what he called anguish about the problems of Moroccans, he expected the outcome. “I did not lose the investiture, I gained my political freedom,” he put it.
He framed the episode as a test of independence. Some parties, by his reading, want a member present in their offices but silent on positions, ready to read whatever paper is handed over and never to object. He refused that role. He had not entered politics to serve as a mere squad member inside a party, but to voice what he believes.
The former lawmaker also questioned the reasoning behind his replacement. He granted any leadership the right to pick its candidates, yet he asked about the political criterion that guided the choice, particularly since the candidate selected in his place was facing judicial prosecution during the previous term. He raised whether his exclusion owed to a gap in competence and record or simply to his refusal to stay quiet.
Bouaida was careful not to turn the moment into a settling of scores. Istiqlal, he acknowledged, is larger than individuals, and he holds respect for the militants he worked alongside for years.
Still, he no longer saw himself within the party’s current political choice, which drove his departure. He also disclosed that he had turned down offers and promises made to keep him on board in exchange for the nomination, unwilling to be “opportunistic” or to reduce politics to a post.
He described the resignation as irrevocable, delivered without hatred toward the party’s base and with a clear conscience.
Leaving Istiqlal, he maintained, does not mean leaving politics or abandoning the defense of citizens. He would not resign from his positions to secure an investiture. He cast the step as the end of one stage and the opening of another, though he withheld any detail about what comes next.
His next destination remains unsettled. Bouaida entered talks about his political future without naming a party, and, according to Al 3omk, which cited a source close to him, a return to the Party of Progress and Socialism (PPS) stands among the options in circulation.
The same source stressed that the PPS scenario is live but carries no final decision or announced agreement, and the constituency he might contest is still open.
The prospect carries weight given his trajectory. Bouaida once belonged to the PPS before moving to the National Rally of Independents (RNI), then joining Istiqlal in 2021. In February 2025, he recounted that same path and rejected the idea of returning to the RNI.
His arrival at Istiqlal in March 2021 came months after he left the RNI, a shift facilitated by Hamdi Ould Errachid, an influential Istiqlal figure in the southern provinces. At the time, his stated aim was to keep defending his principles within or outside the party.
A university professor and former head of the Guelmim-Oued Noun regional council, he ran on the Istiqlal ticket in the September 8, 2021 legislative elections and was not initially declared the winner.
The Constitutional Court reformed the results in July 2022 after finding material errors in the count, awarding him 16,298 votes against 16,242 for the RNI’s Mohamed Rajdal, which handed him the seat.
