Morocco’s moderate Islamist party suffered major losses in parliamentary elections on Wednesday, a stinging setback in one of the last countries where Islamists had risen to power after the Arab Spring protests.
Moroccans cast ballots in legislative, municipal and regional races, the first such votes in the country since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
Despite turnout figures showing nearly half of Moroccans didn’t cast a ballot, the results were clear: The Justice and Development Party, the moderate Islamists known as the PJD, who have held power since 2011, faced steep losses up and down the ballot — possibly enough to lose control of Parliament.
With more than half of the votes counted, the winners included the National Rally of Independents (with 97 seats, according to the Interior Ministry) and the conservative Istiqlal party, both seen as closely aligned with the monarchy. The PJD had 12, according to early results.
Any changing of the guard, however, is unlikely to herald major policy shifts in a country where the royal palace has long been in command. While Morocco is officially a constitutional monarchy, its Parliament lacks the power to overrule the will of Mohammed VI, said Saloua Zerhouni, a political science professor in the capital, Rabat.
“The monarchy will continue to control political parties, undermine the powers of government and the Parliament, and position itself as the sole effective political institution,” Ms. Zerhouni said.
But the result did show one thing: the diminishing space that Islamists now find for themselves in the Middle East and North Africa.
After the pro-democracy protests of the Arab Spring in 2011, many Islamist parties were allowed to run in elections, in some cases for the first time. They swept parliamentary seats in some countries and took power in others, including in Morocco, where overhauls by Mohammed VI paved the way for the PJD to form a governing coalition.
But the tide eventually turned against the Islamists. In Egypt in 2013, a coup deposed the Muslim Brotherhood, leading to its current dictatorship. This year, President Kais Saied of Tunisia suspended Parliament, which was controlled by moderate Islamists, in what many countries described as a coup.
In Morocco, the moderate Islamists made little headway on any agendas of their own, with key ministries like foreign affairs and industry being controlled by other parties. When Morocco’s king decided to make a deal last year with Israel to normalize relations, there was nothing Islamists could do to stop a move they bitterly opposed.
“Most Moroccans across the country, across educational levels, have a pretty healthy dose of political skepticism” and saw that the Islamists had little real power, said Vish Sakthivel, a postdoctoral associate in Middle East studies at Yale University.
And as the pandemic swept through Morocco, the royal palace was seen as the main driver of relief programs.
“Most of the decisions aimed at alleviating the social and economic effects of the pandemic were associated with the central power, the monarchy,” Ms. Zerhouni said. “Whereas political parties and the Parliament were presented as inactive…
Read More News: Islamists See Big Losses in Moroccan Parliamentary Elections
