Moroccans Go With Status Quo in Election

By ANGELA CHARLTON

RABAT, Morocco – This could have been the election that diluted the strength of Morocco’s secular ruling class, giving Islamists unprecedented power in a country where Muslim women in T-shirts sip wine on the streets alongside veiled women drinking tea.

Instead, fear of the unknown appeared to trump the anti-corruption, antiestablishment message of the Islamic-leaning Justice and Development Party, or PJD, in Friday’s election, with voters handing victory to the secular party close to King Mohamed VI.

Morocco, whose cities are widely tolerant of Western customs, has seen a rise in religious conservatism in recent years that has boosted the PJD’s support, especially among the poor and middle class families worried about widespread youth unemployment.

According to preliminary results, the party won 47 of the 325 seats in the lower house of parliament in the vote, five more than it won in the previous election in 2002. It was well short, however, of the 80 seats the party had expected.

Defying predictions, the secular Istiqlal party of the ruling coalition won 52 seats, meaning there likely will be few shifts in the country’s direction and ties with the United States will remain strong, analysts said.

Final results were to be announced later Sunday.

"We were modest," Istiqlal leader Abbas el Fassi said. While the PJD was predicting victory before the vote, he said, "We didn’t say anything because we are confident and patient to see what the Moroccan people have to say."

Yazmina Sibari, a 26-year-old mother who wore a headscarf as she strolled in Rabat, voted for an incumbent candidate from the ruling coalition party RNI. "I don’t know all the candidates, so I voted for the candidate I knew," she said.

Mohamed Laroussi, who works for an advertising agency in Casablanca, said he didn’t vote.

"People are fed up (with) politics," he said. "It’s not a question of being afraid of extremism, because the PJD is not really extremist, but in the end (people) were afraid of major change."

Analysts said that while the pro-Islamic party didn’t fare as well as expected, its message was spreading across the North African country of 33 million people.

"Political Islam is still a growing force, even if voters were not as enthusiastic about the PJD as they had wanted," said Mohamed Darif, a professor at Mohammedia University and expert on Islamic groups and extremism.

He said that the PJD’s failure to win the election could frustrate hard-line supporters and push them toward more extremist groups.

The party presents itself as a bulwark against extremism, although some worry about its long-term plans. It has distanced itself from some members’ calls to introduce Sharia, or Islamic law, and require the veil – especially after Moroccan extremists staged the 2004 Madrid train bombings and suicide attacks in Casablanca in 2003 and earlier this year.

That violence has prompted a government crackdown that threatens the king’s democratic reputation. Morocco’s largest Islamic movement – Justice and Charity, or Adl wal Ihsan, which openly advocates an Islamic government – is banned from politics. Human rights activists also say hundreds of people have been arrested and tortured in anti-terror sweeps by Moroccan police.

Regardless of the results, parliament’s power remains limited since the ultimate authority lies in the hands of the king, his appointees and advisers.

Turnout with the election – just 37 percent – was the lowest in the country’s young democratic history, causing international election observers to express concern about disillusionment with the political system.

Interior Minister Chakib Benmoussa dismissed the sentiment, saying the low turnout reflected the country’s "political maturity."