BUSINESS RECORDER
AFP (Agence France-Presse)
Posted by Muhammad Iqbal
RABAT: Morocco’s Islamist premier Abdelilah Benkirane insisted on Tuesday that democracy in his country was advancing slowly but surely, in an interview with France 24 television channel.
“We are in the process of taking small but decisive steps,” Benkirane told the French television channel on the sidelines of the World Forum for Democracy in Strasbourg.
The Arab Spring “set the regimes in Tunisia and Egypt on fire, and ours was scalded. It was because of that that we had a new constitution, that we had elections and that a party once harassed and marginalised” was voted to power, he said.
Benkirane’s moderate Islamist Party of Justice and Development won historic elections last November that followed constitutional changes introduced by King Mohammed VI to curb his near-absolute powers, in a bid to stifle protests.
