Election results for the first 50 seats in Morocco’s parliament announced by the state news agency early Saturday suggest a moderate Islamist party is taking 40 per cent of the vote.
With just a fraction of the results for the 395-seat Parliament reported, the opposition Justice and Development Party looks to have dramatically increased its share.
Party Secretary General Abdelilah Benkirane said late Friday that by its own estimates, his party had come in first.
According to the new constitution, the party with the most seats gets first crack at forming a new government, so if the trend continues, the Islamists must find coalition partners willing to work with them.
In recent years Morocco’s Islamists have cultivated an image as honest outsiders battling corruption and seeking to improve services, rather than focusing on moral issues such as the women’s headscarf.
Morocco, a close U.S. ally and popular European tourist destination suffers from high unemployment and widespread poverty.
If the Islamists do end up winning the most seats, that would appear to confirm a trend of victories by Islamist parties in elections prompted by the Arab Spring, following Ennahda’s win last month in Tunisia.
With dozens of parties running and a complex system of proportional representation, Morocco’s parliaments are typically divided up between many parties each with no more than a few dozen seats, requiring complex coalitions that are then dominated by the king.
Like the rest of the region, Morocco was swept by pro-democracy protests decrying widespread corruption, which the king attempted to defuse over the summer by ordering the constitution modified to grant more powers to the Parliament and prime minister and then holding elections a year earlier.
Activists, however, have called the moves insincere and clamoured for a boycott.
The government announced a 45 per cent turnout in Friday’s contest, slightly more than legislative elections in 2007, but still less than other polls in this North African kingdom.
A coalition of eight liberal, pro-government parties led by Finance Minister Salaheddine Mezouar have amassed roughly the same amount of seats as the Islamists in the preliminary results announced, but it is the largest single party that forms the government.
