Neo Destour

The New Constitutional Liberal Party (, ; French: Nouveau Parti libéral constitutionnel), most commonly known as Neo Destour, was a Tunisian political party founded in 1934 in Dar Ayed, the house of independence activist Ahmed Ayed, by a group of Tunisian nationalist politicians during the French protectorate. It originated from a split with the Destour party. Led by Habib Bourguiba, Neo Destour became the ruling party upon Tunisian independence in 1956. In 1964, it was renamed the Socialist Destourian Party. History The party was formed as a result of a split from the pre-existing Destour party in 1934, during the Ksar Hellal Congress of March 2. Several leaders were particularly prominent during the party's early years before World War II: Habib Bourguiba, Mahmoud El Materi, Tahar Sfar, Bahri Guiga, and Salah ben Youssef. Prior to the split, a younger group of Destour members had alarmed the party elders by appealing directly to the populace through their more radical newspaper L'Action Tunisienne. The younger group, many from the provinces, seemed more in tune with a wider spectrum of the country-wide Tunisian people, while the party elders represented a more established constituency in the capital city of Tunis; yet both groups were proponents of change, either autonomy or independence. The rupture came at the Destour party congress of 1934.