Special to WorldTribune.com
Morocco’s Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD) dominated elections in the country’s largest cities on Sept. 4, expanding its power four years after running on a platform of major fiscal reform.
The PJD came to power in 2011 in the wake of “Arab Spring” protests which forced King Mohammed VI to devolve some royal powers although the king still maintains ultimate authority.
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On Sept. 4 the PJD won control of all of Morocco’s major cities for the first time in party history, including the capital Rabat, Casablanca, Tangier, Fez, Marrakesh and Agadir.
Overall, election results showed the PJD won 5,021 local or 174 regional assembly seats while rivals Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM) won 6,655 local and 132 regional seats and conservative Independence Party finished with 5,106 local and 119 regional seats.
“Since 1960, for the first time a key party wins elections in the big cities,” said Maati Monjib, a historian and political scientist at the University of Rabat. “Although the PJD was against the Arab Spring protests, they have taken advantage of it by presenting themselves as opponents from inside the system.”
The Islamist party considers itself a fighter against Morocco’s old guard that has controlled the country’s politics and economy since it gained independence from France in 1956.
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Since gaining power, the PJD put together a coalition that made cutting Morocco’s budget deficit a priority while undertaking reform of a cumbersome subsidy system and freezing public sector jobs.
“We started more than 20 years ago and we have integrated into society and our environment gradually,” PJD leader Abdelilah Benkirane said on Sept. 4. “With opposition, we are just like the ant and grasshopper, we work and they sing.”
The Islamists managed to take Fez, a bastion of the Independence Party and its populist leader Hamid Chabat, who left the ruling coalition in 2013 and contested the PJD’s economic policies.
Islamists dominate in Morocco’s local elections, but king still calls the shots added by World Tribune on
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