James Liddell
Moroccans went to the polls last Friday, June 12, to elect their municipal councilors for the next six years. The newly created Party for Authenticity and Modernity (PAM) won the most votes, while the Islamist opposition Party for Justice and Development (PJD) had a poor showing. Although little has changed in the overall state of democratic development in Morocco, there are still several positive trends worth noting.

In preparation for the municipal elections, King Mohammed VI reaffirmed his commitment to transparency in the electoral process, seeking to build on the legitimacy of Morocco’s 2007 legislative elections, widely described as “free and fair” by international observers. Although the scale of the observation missions (both domestic and international) this time was nowhere near what was mobilized two years ago, Morocco’s Consultative Council on Human Rights did describe that the voting took place under “normal and adequate” conditions.

Voter turnout, at 52%, was also higher than the dismal 37% turnout from 2007. This was primarily a result of the greater proximity of local races, as well as a series of strategic measures adopted by the Moroccan government long before the elections.

The increase in the education level of candidates and the number of youth and women running for election are also encouraging trends. Morocco, which introduced an informal gender quota in 2002 at the national level, opted for a 12% quota for women at the local level in 2009. Although the link between gender quotas and bona fide empowerment of women in politics is still hazy, the sharp rise witnessed in the interest of women at the local level is unarguably positive.

The Ministry of Interior reported a rise in the number of women’s candidates from 4.8% in 2003 to 15.7% this time around—with those less than 35 years of age totaling half of all female candidates. The U.S. government also played a supportive role, doling out Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) funds to both the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI) to train thousands of female candidates.

Party leaders were eager to recruit interested women, so as to remain competitive in as many constituencies as possible. The extent that they are actually committed to giving women and youth greater decision-making capabilities in governing bodies or within the party itself, however, has yet to be proven.

Indeed, the crise de confiance between citizens and political parties—brought home during the 2007 elections—has shown no signs of abating. Most Moroccans who do go to the polls do so because they know the candidate personally or because the campaign period represents a rare period of profit and exchange.

Parties primarily seek candidates with the strongest social networks in their respective fiefdoms, whereby name recognition, kinship or tribal affiliation, the distribution of municipal services, and vote-buying schemes are central ingredients to electoral success.

Elections in Morocco have almost always been about the candidate and not the party. With its message of transparency and strong grassroots support, however, the PJD has sought to appeal to those middle class and educated voters in major cities that have tended to vote for the voice of the opposition in the past. This has left rural and semi-urban constituencies strongholds of those parties who rely on patronage, vote-buying and coercion to turn out votes. With close to 75% of municipalities located in rural areas, then, the Islamists’ poor showing was no surprise.

These dynamics of the electoral environment also help explain the ascendance of the PAM, who captured 21.7% of the vote. Created by close friend of the king, Fouad Ali El Himma, the PAM has used its proximity to the palace and a mixture of charisma and clientelism to pull local elites away from their own parties in order to strengthen its position throughout the kingdom’s disparate regions.

Working to ‘rationalize the political sphere’ and with the implicit nod of the king, the PAM has since drawn the ire of the established political class, who stand the most to lose by members of their parties leaving for the PAM. The phenomena of switching parties, known by the French term transhumance, has gotten so out of hand that it led to threats of banning newly arrived PAM candidates who had entered parliament under a different party.

In protest, just weeks before the election, the PAM left the governing coalition for the opposition; a move which appears to be aimed at keeping a weak minority government in place to weather the potential storm resulting from the global economic crisis. Either way, all signs now point to an impending house-cleaning by the PAM following the 2012 legislative elections—if there is not a government shakeup before then.

Despite the positive signs coming out of this election, fundamental problems remain. Politics remains largely a game of competing elite interests, as in most countries, and elections come and go. That the PAM has now emerged as an unstoppable force in Moroccan political life is more a testament to the electoral landscape—whose laws were modified by El Himma when he was Deputy Interior Minister—than to any nascent, grassroots change. Perhaps even more troubling, the results represent another trend—the consolidation of power by those surrounding the king in his absence.

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