Republican Alternative Party (Azerbaijan)


The Republican Alternative Party, formerly the Republican Alternative Movement, commonly referred to as the ReAl Party or simply ReAl, is an Azerbaijani political party founded in January 2009 as a movement by a few young people to achieve democratic and social changes in Azerbaijan. Currently it has more than 500 members comprising mainly young individuals as well as well-known politicians and activists. The head of the party Ilgar Mammadov was arrested before the presidential elections in 2013 but conditionally released on August 13 after 5 years in prison.
According to the official page of the organization, the main reason for the establishment of the movement was the lifting presidential re-election limit which was part of a package of reforms backed by President Ilham Aliyev in the Azerbaijani constitutional referendum on 18 March 2009. ReAl Party considers that this constitutional change damaged the republican values of the country and now the higher goal is to re-establish the republic.
Despite multiple attempts to organize the first party congress in various venues since September 2017, the administrative board of ReAl was rejected several times by the city municipality and available hotels in Baku and was not allowed to organize the foundation congress for becoming a political party as part of legal procedures. As a result, ReAl held its first congress online on 7–8 April 2018 and announced to be a political party from that time on.