The low turnout — just 37 percent — for Morocco’s parliamentary election this week sends a message that the establishment will need to consider carefully. Voter disinterest is hardly new these days. The turnout in mature democracies — for instance in Europe — has been falling in recent decades. But in Morocco as in neighboring Algeria this May, where only 35 percent of the population bothered to go to the polls, the disinterest carries an extra danger.
What citizens in both countries clearly believe is that their votes count for little. Nothing is likely to change. The power, “le pouvoir,” will carry on as usual, according little power to the elected government. Since in Morocco, the ballot was carried out using a system of proportional representation, the mandate for the leading parties, which must perforce strike a deal to form a coalition government, is actually not strong. The fact that the vast majority of voters chose to stay at home was therefore a clear demonstration opposing the current political system — what one political party characterized after the counting as “a silent protest.”
On the plus side, international observers found little to question in the way that the campaigning and voting were conducted. It was expected that the moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD) would emerge as the winner. In the event it came second to the nationalist Istiqlal Party which was in government in coalition with the Union of Socialist Popular Forces (USFP), which is now the third largest party. Istiqlal Party leader Abbas El-Fassi clearly believes that he can renew his alliance with the USFP and will be invited by the king to form a new government.
All Moroccan politicians might, however, reflect on the weakness of the mandate they have each been given. The clear danger is that if there is little confidence in the existing political system, radicals, particularly Islamist radicals, will become sufficiently alienated to seek to act outside it. Just as in Algeria, where the Islamist FIS party constituted a moderate political force, the PJD represents a middle-of-the-road argument for evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, change. Strong support from both parties has come from the young and poor who have become disillusioned by largely undelivered promises of economic and social improvement. King Mohammed has made known his belief that change must come after the long static years of his father’s reign. The question is how fast he is going to permit that change to occur.
While it might seem obvious that the Istiqlal Party as the largest in the new Chamber of Representatives should be invited to form a new coalition, the king should not ignore the silent protest inherent in the low turnout. In the first elections held in 2002, a respectable 51.6 percent of voters cast a ballot. The two key messages from this new election seem to be first that the executive must agree to yield more power to parliamentarians and secondly that the PJD must be given a role in the next coalition.
