Moroccan local elections: the results
Not terribly exciting in comparison with, say, Iran, but the final results from the Moroccan locals are in. Top five:
- Parti authenticité et modernité – 21.7%
- Parti Istiqlal – 19.1%
- Rassemblement national des indépendants – 14.8%
- Union socialiste des forces populaires – 11.6%
- Mouvement populaire – 8%
So that’s that. Istiqlal and USFP has a past history in opposition, but seem to have tied their future very firmly to the mast of the monarchy since several years, while the rest of this lot are pure system parties, cogs in the patronage system who haven’t really bothered to develop an ideology even for show. The first party that could be characterized as ideological, and even somewhat oppositional, shows up at sixth place with 5.5%: PJD, the Islamist non-bogeyman. Participation officially stood at 52.4%, a very slight drop, but considerably higher than the parliamentary elections.
For further reading: some scattered party leader reactions, here; a piece on the PJD’s role, here; and a customarily gargantuan ibn Kafka post on the PAM kerfuffle in its proper historical & legal context, here.
Maghreb Politics Review 
Arre,
Do you know if it’s common in Morocco for local elections to draw more votes than national? That is entirely contrary to American trends.
-JAK
Many things with Moroccan elections are probably contrary to American trends … but, yes, that seems to be the case. The most recent two local elections both had a rate of participation between 50-55%, while the parliamentary elections have been at 37% (2007), 51% (2002) and 58% (1997). (No, I didn’t know it by heart.)
Slightly of topic, but still about the enchanting kingdom:
Ali Amar, co-founder and former editor of the Casablanca weekly “Le Journal hebdomadaire” has published a book about the ten years of rule of Mohammed VI called “Mohammed VI, le grand malentendu” (Mohammed VI, the big misunderstanding).
In this book Ali Amar discribes Morocco under the rule of Mohammed VI and the sharp discrepancy between the reality lived by the wast majority of the people in feudal Morocco where the king both is undisputed leader and owner of over 60 percent of the country’s larger companies, and the way the country’s king often is portrayed in the Western world as “modern, moderate and open”.
In an interview with Courrier International Ali Amar talks about his book and the development of the Moroccan press since 1999, which in his eyes is no longer as free as it was for a period after the death of Hassan II. He calls this period a “parenthesis which has been closed”.
Unfortunately for the anglophones the interview is in French, but you’ll get a good idea of the content from this English version by Google’s translation service
The publisher Calmann-Lévy, part of the Hachette group, has apparently chosen not to distribute Ali Amar’s book in Morocco. They “prefer to not provide certain books in order to preserve their interests in the Moroccan market”, says a source at Hachette to the Moroccan journal Tel Quel (also in French).
Here’s another interesting story, this time from Le Journal Hebdomadaire about how the royal palace was implicated in forming coalitions between political parties in order to outmanoeuvre the PJD in Rabat and Casablanca.