By DPA
Rabat : Moroccan Islamists failed to become the country’s biggest faction in Parliament but consolidated their position as a political force to be reckoned with, analysts said after provisional election results were announced.
The Party of Justice and Development (PJD) increased its representation from 42 to 47 seats in the North African kingdom’s 325-member parliament, coming second after the nationalist party Istiqlal in Friday’s poll.
The PJD’s mandate fell well short of the 80 seats it had hoped for, but nevertheless raised the question of its entry into government.
The provisional results were declared Saturday and final results are expected to be announced Sunday.
While the rise of the PJD worries Morocco’s leftist intellectuals, many other middle-class city dwellers back the party less on religious grounds than because they see it as the only force capable of fighting corruption and promoting social justice.
While Moroccans were analyzing the provisional election results, a car bomb rocked a military barracks in neighbouring Algeria, killing at least 30 people.
Most analysts, however, reject direct comparisons between Morocco and Algeria, where the roots of the current violence lie in the cancellation of the electoral victory of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) by the army in the early 1990s.
Morocco’s main Islamist movements, on the other hand, stress their opposition to violence, though the country has seen the emergence of small violent cells, such as the one that killed 45 people in 2003 in Casablanca.
Friday’s vote also showed that Morocco remains a cautious and slow-moving society, with many conservative voters choosing Istiqlal or other centre-right parties over the PJD.
The centre-right had wooed potential Islamist voters, wielding conservative candidates and joining the PJD in criticizing corruption and the educational system.
The Socialists, who slipped from 50 to 36 seats, paid the price for the perceived failures of the coalition government to which Istiqlal and two other centre-right parties had also belonged.
The PJD blamed the modesty of its success to electoral fraud, though some other parties disputed such allegations.
The Islamists were also thought to have suffered from the record low voter turnout of 37 percent and may have lost potential seats because of the redrawing of some constituency boundaries.
The PJD is tapping into Moroccans’ disillusionment with traditional politics in the country, where King Mohammed VI wields the key powers, leaving the government only a limited margin of manoeuvre.
Most governing politicians end up adapting to the power system centred on the royal palace, and just seek their own interest, many Moroccans feel.
“The PJD is different in that it is a virgin party, with no links to the power system or to foreign countries such as France,” the former colonial power, an analyst said in Rabat.
The established parties are seen as incapable of solving the country’s problems, from the huge gap between the elite and the poor masses to 50 percent illiteracy.
The lack of opportunity has prompted tens of thousands of young Moroccans to risk their lives in clandestine attempts to cross the sea to neighbouring Spain.
Many Moroccans see the ethics of Islam as the only force capable of uprooting corruption, which reportedly reaches from state companies to patients having to pay extra for hospital beds.
The PJD has so far been in the opposition, but pundits did not exclude the possibility that King Mohammed and the other main parties would now be willing to include it in a coalition government.
Analysts say the regime would like to use the PJD to stem the bigger and more radical al-Adl Wal Ihsane (Justice and Charity), a semi-legal Islamist movement opposed to the king’s role as the official leader of Moroccan Muslims.
The PJD has toned down its Islamist rhetoric, but it also has a radical wing, and some believe the party’s moderation to be only a facade.
“The real goal is an Islamic republic, not more nor less,” liberal politician Mohammed Ziane said.
Most PJD supporters, however, appear less concerned about the presence in Morocco of bars serving alcohol or of women not wearing headscarves, than about unemployment or corrupt courts.
Political Islam could play a role similar to communism earlier in earlier decades in southern Europe, helping the popular classes gain access to a more equitable and democratic society, French expert Pierre Vermeren has said.