Morocco's Upcoming Elections: An Exercise in Futility

Thousands of Moroccans took to the streets in protests demanding a boycott of Friday's legislative elections. The elections come at the heels of constitutional reforms proposed by a blue ribbon palace commission last June. The new constitution garnered a whopping 97% vote by Moroccan voters, who came out in droves to support royally endorsed changes. The reforms touted as revolutionary in the history of modern Moroccan political history, have been subject to large-scale criticism notably by opposition forces and the February 20 protest movement.

In a purely parliamentary fashion, the constitution mandates that the Prime Minister will come from the majority party in the lower house of the parliament. As head of the government, the PM will enjoy vast executive powers with significant appointment powers, the ability to dissolve the parliament and declare state of emergency with royal consent. The king, however, retains most discretionary powers, and authority over the military and the religious establishment. The elections are the culmination of months of national debate on the future democratic trajectory of Morocco.

The November 25 elections are hardly revolutionary, and out of sync with the ambitions of millions of Moroccans longing for democratic progress. The expectations are that these contests will feature the same panoply of state engineering as past elections. In the absence of rigorous laws against corruption and fraud, one can expect same old violations. Moroccans abroad are also barred from voting and the electoral districts are drawn arbitrarily to favor pro-palace parties. Some 31 parties from different ideological and non-ideological strands saturate the electoral scene. This inevitably bars anyone party from gaining sufficient outright majority to the 395-seat parliament. Analysts predict a slight plurality for the Islamist Justice and Development party (PJD), which in that case, will have to rely on other parties (perhaps the Istiqlal Party) to form a government. The PJD have long been hampered by unfavorable electoral districting and lack of appeal in rural Morocco. Pro-palace parties like the Party of Authenticity and Modernity along with the National Rally of Independent could also manage plurality gains in the elections. Regardless of the winner, the elections are without consequences for the future trajectory of Moroccan democracy.

This is not pessimism but an accurate reading of the elections in light of past and present indicators. Friday’s elections will bring no political progress to Morocco and are yet another tool for the regime to control the public discourse in the middle of turbulent times for the MENA region. These electoral contests, as in in the past, will be dominated by state’s manipulation of electoral laws and administration. And though recently freer than in the past, elections within the context of the new inconsequential constitutional reforms are still short of realizing the aspirations of millions of Moroccans for true democratic transition. Furthermore, elections in Morocco are in and themselves instances of regime projection of power promoting a cultural of dissonance of regime commitment to democratic change. In addition to being defensive mechanisms to maintain fledgling regime legitimacy, and “safety valves” used to diffuse challenges to state authority, especially in times of economic crises.

Moroccan elections are manifestations of regime supremacy in the political arena as they set the rules of electoral contestation, which is marked by extreme competition for legislative power. However, a puzzle offers itself, why do political parties take part in such limited elections, thus legitimizing an authoritarian regime? Why not boycott and denounce these electorally engineered contests? The paradox of rejection-participation in the electoral process is ever present in all authoritarian Arab regimes; however, Arab political parties still choose to participate in order to contest those same rules of the political game. In Morocco’s “manipulated pluralism,” the monarchy rules over a consensus among elite and society on its perennial role in both spiritual and temporal realms. Political opposition, as William Zartman argues, may appear as a support of the state within a notion of role complementarity, in which state and the opposition reinforce each other, where “neither uses the other, but each serves the other’s interests in performing its own role.” Therein lies one of the main sources of public disapproval of political parties perceived as coopted organs of the state. This accounts for anemic levels of popularity and general voters’ apathy, resulting in low voter turnout.

Friday’s legislative elections will continue this unfortunate trend of public cynicism and party fragmentation. Like other elections in the past, they will fail to usher in a new era in Moroccan politics as many anticipated. More importantly, the cosmetic constitutional changes and ensuing elections illustrate two distinct features of party politics and elections in Morocco. First, there is tremendous state’s penetration, which has been apparent in all the electoral contests Morocco has witnessed thus far and has shaped the party landscape today. Within Morocco’s political system, the state bestowed political favors and in some cases created loyal parties to power such as the Gathering of National Independents (RNI) in 1977, the Constitutional Union (UC) in 1984, the Social Democratic Movement (MDS) in 1997, and the Party of Authenticity and Modernity in 2008. The second feature of Morocco’s parties is their lack of ideological and political clarity; Parties are generally committed to socio-economic and democratic reforms but lack effective policy formulations and strategic planning.

In the midst of this carefully engineered political scene, the regime sits unchallenged and contested, jubilant over the masterful manner in which it managed to placate and enervate the protests movement in Morocco. The current elections legitimate the cosmetic constitutional changes of July 2011 and undermine the case of democratic progress in a country that may just stand as the exception to the vast popular changes sweeping over the MENA region. Until there are honest thorough reforms to the core structure of Makhzenite power, democratic progress will remain elusive in Morocco.