Islamists suffer big defeat by liberal parties in Morocco vote
18m vote in both local and parliamentary elections on the same day for the first time
Liberal parties seen as close to Morocco’s king dealt a crushing blow to the longruling Islamists in parliamentary elections, preliminary results announced yesterday showed.
The Justice and Development Party (PJD), which headed the governing coalition for a decade, saw its support collapse from 125 seats in the outgoing assembly to just 12, Interior Minister Abdelouafi Laftit said.
Former prime minister and ex-PJD leader Abdelilha Benkirane urged the current party boss Sa’ad Al Deen Al Othmani to resign and the latter later stepped down. The PJD was far behind its main rivals, the National Rally of Independents (RNI) and the Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM), with 97 and 82 seats respectively, and the centre-right Istiqlal party with 78 in the 395-seat assembly.
The Istiqlal party, Morocco’s oldest, made a remarkable comeback, adding 32 seats.
Turnout was 50.35 per cent, higher than the 43 per cent at the previous legislative polls in 2016, but lower than the 53 per cent during the 2015 local elections. But changes to the voting system meant it was the first time Morocco’s 18 million voters cast ballots in both parliamentary and local elections on the same day, in an effort to boost turnout.
Political scientist Ismail Hammoudi said internal PJD policy squabbles after Benkirane was ousted as party leader contributed to its defeat.
Analyst Mustapha Sehimi said the fact that Othmani’s position was seen to be a compromise greatly weakened the Islamists’ position.