Region | Morocco
Fears over Morocco's 'silent majority'
Rabat In a political system geared to block the rise of extremism, the most worrying voice in Morocco's parliamentary elections was the silent one, politicians and analysts said.
- Los Angeles Times -Washington Post
- Published: 23:34 September 13, 2007
Rabat In a political system geared to block the rise of extremism, the most worrying voice in Morocco's parliamentary elections was the silent one, politicians and analysts said.
The 37 per cent turnout of registered voters last Friday, which the government said was the lowest ever in this North African nation, signals a growing sense of public disenfranchisement from a system that still reserves power almost exclusively for the king, Mohammad VI.
The fear is that the discontented may turn again to violence to make themselves heard. Bombings by Islamist radicals in Morocco killed more than 40 people in 2003 and this year.
"The danger of all this is we have a silent majority now," said Ali Amar, editor of Le Journal Hebdomadaire in Casablanca, one of the country's most influential newsweeklies. "And the silent people are more and more the radicals."
Bolstering democracy
Friday's parliamentary elections in Morocco were only the second under Mohammad. His father, King Hassan II, ensured high turnouts in internationally criticised elections by busing voters to the polls. The first national elections under his son, in 2002, recorded a 52 per cent turnout.
Mohammad began his reign in 1999 with promises to strengthen democracy, but since the 2003 bombings, his government has concentrated on combating violence by religious extremists.
Parliament has few real powers, and the constitution makes it all but impossible for any party to gain a majority in the legislature.
The country's most popular Islamist political group, the fundamentalist Justice and Charity bloc, is outlawed but also boycotts elections.
A moderate Islamist bloc, the Justice and Development Party, did unexpectedly well in the 2002 vote. That showing, and a 2006 survey by the US-based International Republican Institute indicating that nearly 47 per cent of Moroccans supported the party, led its leaders and political analysts here to predict that it would come in first in Friday's elections.
Instead, the bloc won only four more seats than the 42 it had won in 2002, the government announced over the weekend, making it the second-largest party in parliament instead of the third.
The government warned then that the plunge in turnout was troubling.
"The challenge today is to think of the best way of mobilising the electorate in support of political action. That is everybody's responsibility: officials, political parties and civil society," Interior Minister Chakib Benmoussa said.
Among top winners in Friday's elections were nationalist and Socialist parties, both far more experienced in elections than the moderate Islamist bloc.
Justice and Development Party officials blamed alleged vote-buying and other election fraud for their showing Friday. But international monitors said the vote itself appeared free and fair.
Mohammad Tozy, an expert in political Islam at the Moroccan Centre for Sociological Studies in Casablanca, said the Justice and Development Party also lost votes by neglecting the country's conservative Islamist voters.
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