The Good News About the Moroccan Election Results
Yes, there actually is some good news. It is true that the party that received the most votes was the Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD). This means the party gets to form a coalition in the parliament and nominate a Prime Minister. You can’t sugarcoat that part.
But, that doesn’t mean that the Islamists won a majority of the vote and that is hopeful. Look at the results.
Total seats up for grabs: 395.
PJD: 107.
Koutla bloc (secularist socialist alliance of 3 parties): 117.
Coalition for Democracy (eight liberal parties with ties to the monarchy): 160.
Altogether, the non-Islamists won 277 of the seats and the Islamist PJD won 107. The remaining 11 (some reports say 12, saying that the Coalition for Democracy only got 159) went to parties that do not belong to any of those three blocs. Regardless of their composition, the results show clearly that the Islamists are the minority in Morocco. Their success can be attributed to the divisions among the secularists that split their total among multiple parties.
This is also what happened in Tunisia, as I wrote here. The bottom line: The Islamists have not won the day.
