Morocco’s moderate Islamist party won a parliamentary election for the first time, preliminary results showed on Saturday, the latest religious party to achieve huge gains on the back of the Arab Spring.
The victory by the Justice and Development Party (PJD) comes just a month after Islamists won Tunisia’s post-revolution election and days before their predicted surge in Egyptian polls.
With 288 out of the 395 seats up for grabs awarded, the party had captured 80 seats in Friday’s election, Moroccan Interior Minister Taib Cherkaoui told a news conference.
That is nearly double the 45 seats won by Moroccan Prime Minister Abbas el-Fassi’s Independence Party which finished second and has headed a five-party coalition government since 2007.
“We thank the Moroccans who voted for the PJD and we can only be satisfied,” PJD Secretary-General Abdelilah Benkirane told reporters.
Cars honked their horns while passengers threw fliers out of car windows bearing images of a lamp, the party’s symbol, in Morocco’s seaside capital Rabat after the partial results were released.
According to a new constitution overwhelmingly approved in a July referendum, King Mohammed VI must now pick the prime minister from the party that won the most seats in parliament instead of naming whomever he pleases.
It was the king who proposed changes to the constitution in March, as autocratic regimes toppled in nearby Tunisia, Egypt and Libya and pro-democracy protests swelled at home.
King Mohammed is the latest scion of a monarchy that has ruled the country for 350 years. The new constitution curbs some, but not all, of his near-absolute powers.
The Islamists will have to govern with other parties and Benkirane acknowledged his party would need to tailor its program to appease prospective coalition partners.
The PJD was “open to everyone” when it came to forming alliances, he said.
“The nub of our program and of those who will govern with us will have a double axis: democracy and good governance,” Benkirane told the France 24 television channel.
The PJD has gradually increased its share of the vote in Morocco, seen as one of the most stable countries in the region.
After winning just eight seats in 1997, it surged in popularity, scooping 42 seats in the 2002 election, the first of King Mohammed VI’s reign.
It then increased its share in the last election in 2007 when it finished second with 47 seats.
The party focused at first on social issues, such as opposition to summer music festivals and the sale of alcohol, but has shifted to issues with broader voter appeal like the fight against corruption and high unemployment.
During the current campaign it promised to cut poverty in half and raise the minimum wage by 50 percent.
Unlike the banned Islamist opposition group Justice and Charity, the Justice and Development Party pledges its allegiance to the monarchy.
However, Benkirane’s past attacks on the Berber people and homosexuals have provoked controversy.
The two parties that make up the outgoing governing coalition — the Independence Party and Socialist Union of Popular Forces — have said they would be willing to govern with the Islamist party.
Voter turnout was 45.4 percent, up from 37 percent from the last parliamentary election in 2007, but lower than the 51.6 percent turnout recorded in 2002.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing