The Trajectory of the Moroccan Party of Justice and Development. Eva Wegner. & ... monarchy in which legal political actors hardly venture. The paper is based ...
Hitting the Glass Ceiling: The Trajectory of the Moroccan Party of Justice and Development Eva Wegner & Miquel Pellicer (September 2008) I) Introduction This paper analyzes the evolution of the Moroccan Islamist party, the Party of Justice and Development (PJD), from its origins in the 1990s until 2007. The analysis follows three axes: the political context in which the party operates, its mobilization resources and decisions, and its electoral support. For the case of the PJD, these factors converge to yield a trajectory of rise, transformation, and stagnation. In the first years, the PJD expanded its organization and small constituency, established a reputation of clean, democratic, serious, hardworking party, and experienced a marked rise in electoral support. Although the party had lived through a difficult period following the terrorist attacks in 2003, there was a widespread belief that the party was going to win the 2007 elections and the party was preparing itself to play a leading role in government. In the event, however, the PJD did not win. Its support actually declined relative to the previous electoral contest. To explain this trajectory, this paper focuses on three interrelated factors. First, the political context and especially the PJD's interactions with the regime. This aspect is crucial, for the regime, as Morocco's most powerful player, defines the framework/ threshold of permissible actions of legal political actors. Second, the evolution of party organization (its size, degree of institutionalization and of internal democracy) and the PJD's relationship with the Islamist movement. These factors shape the party's capacities for electoral mobilization. Third, the party's political choices, namely the themes and intensity of mobilization. These three elements form the background against which we discuss the changing patterns of electoral support for the PJD. Relative to the research agenda of this project, this paper is particular in two respects. First, the focus of the analysis is clearly on the Islamist party, as opposed the Islamist movement as a whole. Second, little emphasis is given to the role of external actors and events for the evolution of the party or to its “foreign relations”. These choices follow from peculiarities of the Moroccan case. As to the first, the Moroccan Islamist movement is smaller and less developed than many of its Middle East counterparts. In Morocco, the Islamist actor relevant for institutional politics is clearly the 1
Islamist party, not an Islamist movement organization. Our lack of emphasis on external actors, events, or policies follows from their unimportance for the evolution of the party, relative to other cases covered in this project, and from the fact that foreign policy is the domain reserve of the monarchy in which legal political actors hardly venture. The paper is based on field research conducted over several years. This includes interviews with party leaders and members, as well as the analysis of party/ movement organization documents. Additionally, our analysis is based on electoral data merged with census data, which includes socioeconomic information of different electoral districts. The paper is organized as follows. Section II provides a brief description of the background: the emergence and different strands of the Moroccan Islamist movement and its popular support. Section III discusses the origin of the PJD and its performance in the 1997 elections. Section IV analyzes the political context, mobilization resources and decisions, and the electoral performance of the PJD period from 1997 to 2002, while section V addresses these themes for the period from 2002 to 2007. Finally, Section VI concludes with a discussion on the reasons for the stagnation of the PJD. II) Background: The Moroccan Islamist Movement The Moroccan Islamist movement surfaced in the early 1970s. The two strands that emerged, Justice and Charity and the Islamic Youth, drew both on the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood of the time: they embraced a radical social critique and defiance of the ruling elites, and, in the case of the Islamic Youth also violent actions. The political context was one of almost complete closure of the political system: King Hassan II had declared a state of emergency in 1965 and engaged in repressive campaigns against the parties of the national movement, the Istiqlal and the leftist National Union of Popular Forces (Union Nationale des Forces Populaires (UNFP)). From 1965 to 1970, Hassan II had been governing and legislating personally. His rule was based on the military and the establishment of a ve ast clientelist network. Today, the Moroccan Islamist movement is dominated by essentially two organizations: Justice and Charity and the Movement for Unity and Reform (MUR), a non-violent successor of the Islamic Youth. Both organizations are outlawed in spite of repeated attempts to obtain a legal status. Justice and Charity started out as a one man enterprise of Abdelsalam Yasin, a member of a Sufi brotherhood until the early 1970s. After reading the writings of Hassan Al-Banna he became politically active; in 1974 he wrote an open letter to the King, entitled ”Islam or the deluge”. In this now famos letter, he harshly criticised the economic and social conditions in Morocco, linked them to the wealth of the King (which he addressed in a paternalistic and violent manner), and advocated 2
the return to Islam as the solution to these deficiencies (Munson 1993). As a result of this letter, he was interned into a psychiatric hospital. When he was released after a few years, he continued to promote an Islamic polity but abstained from criticising the King directly. From 1981 onwards, Yasin began to build an organization whose structure was similar to the Muslim Brotherhood. 1 The organization is largely based in big cities, especially Casablanca and Rabat (Shahin 1998: 195). Its sources of income are membership contributions and, to a lesser extent, the selling of Islamic material (book, video and audio tapes, Islamic clothes) (Tozy 1999a: 212-214). Justice and Charity has always embraced non-violent means of action. But it has also rejected the conditions of electoral participation, namely to publicly accept the religious legitimacy of the monarchy and its dominance in the political process. It has suffered sporadic repression, such as the occasional banning of its newspaper or, more seriously, the complete dissolution of the association and the arrest of all members of the Guidance Bureau and scores of followers in 1990. Yasin himself was put under house arrest in 1984 where he remained until 2000. More recently, the organization has been persecuted after the terrorist attacks of 16 May 2003 and since Nadia Yasin (the daughter of the founder and currently the most prominent spokesperson of the movement) has challenged the monarchy by demanding an “republic”. The other strand of the Islamist movement, the Islamic Youth, was founded in the early 1970s by Abdel Karim Muti‘, an inspector of the ministry of education. The “public” part of the group, a religious and educational association that aimed at offering Islamic education (organising summer camps and public health campaigns), was legal for a few years (Shahin 1998: 184-185). Underneath this organisation was a clandestine structure, which Tozy describes as a paramilitary organisation whose members were dominantly high school students (1999a: 231). The Islamic Youth was banned in 1975 and Muti‘ fled to exile. After a period of persecution, the majority of its members founded a new organisation in the early 1980s, eventually renamed the Movement of Unity and Reform (MUR) in 1996. These pre-MUR organisations underwent several ideological changes that included the democratization of organisational structures, the rejection of violent means of actions, and eventually the aim to found a political party and participate in elections. The Moroccan Islamist movement has been less researched than those of the Mashrek and not much is known about the profile and numbers of its activists and sympathizers - even more so in the 1980s and 1990s. Three points can be made with some confidence. First, compared to many other MENA countries, the Moroccan Islamist organizations are small. Although figures are not available, 1
Justice and Charity is headed by the Supreme Guide and a guidance bureau composed of six members. The smallest units are cells (families, composed out of 10 members), followed by branches (composed out of three to ten families) and regional councils (composed of the leaders of three to seven branches). It has specialised committees for teachers, students, and women. The Supreme guide appoints all the regional cadres.
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Moroccan Islamist organizations neither reach the countryside nor do they have powerful charity organisations such as in Egypt or Jordan. Second, active support for both the MUR’s predecessor organisations and for Justice and Charity came mainly from students and some public employees. Only a limited number of independent preachers had reached out to peddlers, shopkeepers and workers (Munson 1986: 271-275). Third, surveys found that the Islamist movement had potentially large numbers of sympathisers. Nachtwey and Tessler (1999), for instance, cite a survey of 1000 households in Rabat undertaken in 1996/1997 on the basis of which they propose that almost half of the respondents (men and women equally) were potentially supportive of Islamist platforms.2 III. The Starting Configuration of the PJD At the beginning of the 1990s, the Moroccan Islamists applied for the legalisation of a “Party of National Renewal”.3 Although notions like shari'a were cautiously avoided, the application was rejected by the ministry of interior invoking the prohibition of religious parties (Tozy 1999a: 241). Instead, the regime tolerated that the MUR integrated/ overtook a dormant political party, the Popular Constitutional and Democratic Movement. This party was not contesting elections and had no organisational structures but a charismatic leader with good connections to the palace, Dr. Abdelkarim Khatib. Officially, the MUR only “joined” this party in 1996 when some of its core leaders were appointed to the MPCD's executive bureau at an extraordinary party congress. The investment into the MPCD's structures had already began in 1992, when MUR members and leaders founded or re-animated the party's local structures in the big and medium-size cities where the MUR had its own supporters. The participation of the Islamists in the 1997 elections in form of the MPCD did not attract particular attention at the time. Much more important was the so-called alternance government (that supposedly ended 40 years of conflict between monarchy and opposition parties) and, more generally, the overall process of political liberalisation that generated hopes that Morocco was engaging in a process of democratization (Tozy 1999b). The alternance government was led by the USFP whose leader, A. Youssoufi was appointed as Prime Minister; it also included all other former 2
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As Nachtwey and Tessler acknowledge (1999: 60), the quoted survey had limitations. “Support for Islamist movements and platforms” was measured by constructing an index combining the responses to (1) the degree to which religion should guide administrative and political matters and (2) the extent to which religion should guide administrative and political matters. Clearly, such responses may reveal potential support for Islamist movement but are by no means a sufficient condition. For instance, high scores could as well transform into votes for the Istiqlal Party. This strive for electoral participation was was shared by Islamist groups in other countries at the turn of the 1990s. In Algeria, the FIS had successfully participated in local elections; in Tunisia, the An-Nahda organisation had presented candidates in the 1989 elections; in Egypt members of the Muslim Brotherhood were running in parliamentary elections since the mid-1980s; and in Jordan the Muslim Brotherhood had successfully contested the 1989 elections.
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opposition parties, such as the Istiqlal and the ex-communist Party of Progress and Socialism. The broader process of political liberalization, enacted by Hassan II during the 1990s was aimed to stabilize the political system at the face of severe social and economic crises that had led to repeated and strong rioting. It included the freeing of political prisoners, improved press freedom and constitutional reforms increased the power of political parties and parliament. Before this background, the low key participation of the new Islamist party was hardly relevant news. In a campaign essentially performed by MUR activists and media, the PJD (still under the name of MPCD until 1998) began to establish its image as a party close to the ordinary people by employing a largely grass-roots campaigning style. It focused strongly on issues of social justice, morality, transparency and authenticity.4 The 1997 elections can offer a picture of the initial electoral support for the PJD. This picture, albeit useful, will be limited and distorted for at least two reasons. First, the election results were strongly manipulated. According to the Country Report on Human Rights Practices of the U.S. Embassy, most independent observers concluded that the election results were heavily influenced, if not predetermined by the regime (U.S. Department of State 1998). Second, detailed electoral data are lacking and the data available cannot be easily linked to census data with socioeconomic characteristics. Nevertheless, the results do provide some hints about how the PJD started out: even if widespread fraud makes it likely that the PJD had more support than what the elections reveal, it is sensible to assume that, at least in the places where it won, it did have substantial support. The party fielded candidates in 142 of the 325 electoral districts, a 44% coverage. According to the official results, the PJD received a total of 264 324 votes. These translated into 9 parliamentary seats, less than 3% of them. The majority of PJD candidates gaining seats were members of the MUR’s first and second most important committees, i.e. the Executive Bureau and the Shura Council respectively. The PJD's meager result can be attributed to two key factors. First, as mentioned, electoral fraud. The regime's ability to influence the election results was so much in the mind of the Islamists that they confessed not to be unhappy with their performance, as they had not been sure whether they would be allowed to gain seats at all.5 At the same time, it is sensible to assume that the PJD's electoral performance was not only the doing of Hassan II and his powerful minister of the interior, Driss Basri. As mentioned, the final and official deal with Dr. Khatib was very recent, the power of the Islamists inside the party still not consolidated 6, and the party organization's mobilization 4
5 6
Its platform was entitled "For a Total Revival. Authenticity – Justice – Development". For the 1997 electoral campaign, see Willis 1999 and Tozy 1999a. Interview with a PJD leader, 6. November 2003. Against the preferences of the Islamists, the MPCD had boycotted the communal elections in the same year. MUR
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capacities limited. The MUR itself was not an organization with a large membership that could be immediately mobilized as voters and the official time to campaign was limited to two weeks before the elections. In fact, it is worth noting that the votes cast for the PJD were way below what one would have expected from the above mentioned surveys. Unless these severely overestimated overall Islamist support, the PJD indeed had not managed to become visible to many Islamist sympathizers. The electoral results thus also reflect the ad-hoc character of the PJD's mobilization and its lack of mobilization capacities. In which type of districts did the PJD win its seats? The first column of Table 1 shows the districts where the party won its seats. The clearest trait is that these were highly urbanized: four of them were in Casablanca, the largest Moroccan urban settlement, and one each in Fes, Agadir, Tangier and Oujda, all comparatively large cities. A natural way of going beyond the urban character of PJD support is to analyse their support within Casablanca. For 1997 the exercise is difficult, but some insights can be derived. Within Casablanca, the PJD obtained seats in the districts of Bab Jadid, Sadri-Raja, Al Idrissia and Bouchentouf. The first, Bab Jadid, belongs to Casablanca Anfa, a notably well-off part of the city. The two last districts, Al Idrissia and Bouchentouf, can be explicitly identified in the 1994 census (within the prefecture of Al Fida Derb Sultan) so that a more explicit account of their profile can be made. Table 2 shows their profiles, compared to the average in the prefecture of Al Fida Derb Sultan and also compared to the average of Casablanca. Al Idrissia appears as slightly better off than the average, in terms of illiteracy, scholarization, and household commodities; Bouchentouf, in turn, appears as slightly below average in most indicators. The differences, however, are not large: both are fairly average parts of Casablanca, neither particularly badly off nor particularly well off. Overall, the PJD appears to have had initial support in middle/ average places of Casablanca, possibly with some bias towards slight affluence. In sum, the PJD started its life essentially as an appendix of one strand of the Moroccan Islamist movement, the MUR. It participated in elections for the first time in a liberalizing but insecure context, obtaining a decent but unspectacular result. Reflecting the profile of Islamist movement supporters, the constituencies it represented were clearly urban and possibly in the direction of the middle class. III. 1997-2002: The Consolidation of Inclusion and the Rise of the PJD The Political Context In the initial years of formal political participation, still under the reign of Hassan II, there was a general consensus in the PJD that a key aim was to consolidate the regime's inclusion decision. In members participated as independence and won around 100 seats as municipal councillors.
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order to solidify this decision, the PJD supported the alternance government even if that government was led by the (ideologically opposed) Left. 7 Hassan II had asked for a consensual alternance and by being part of that alternance, the Islamists wanted to show that they were not a “curent of refusal”8. Another step in that direction was the decision to officially accept the partial coverage of electoral districts. This decision had already been enacted in 1997 but was officially adopted by a party congress in 1999. The accession of Mohammed VI to the throne in 1999 generated – at least in the first years – a freer political climate. Decisions of the new King such as lifting of Sheikh Yasin's house arrest, the forced resignation of the Driss Basri, (Morocco's minister of interior for almost 30 years and a symbol of human rights violation and electoral fraud) or the formation of a commission to indemnise victims of torture, as well as his discourses on a new concept of authority suggested that the margin for political actors had increased. For the PJD, this did not lead to a much more assertive stance towards the regime – the limited coverage, for instance, was kept in the 2002 elections. However, it allowed the party to become more assertive towards other political actors, leaving the alternance government over concerns of popular support. It is important to note that the decision not to be confrontational towards the regime was a choice of the party. The Islamic Action Front in Jordan, for instance, followed another path when mobilizing against a core regime policy, the peace treaty with Israel. The PJD, in contrast, has never stepped over the threshold of acceptable mobilization – either in intensity or in topics. Its key aim was to consolidate its inclusion into the political institutions. This preference for “playing it safe” vis-a-vis the monarchy has been, among other things, the result of factional alignments inside the PJD. There are two big groups within the party who have generally coincided in their preference for a careful regime game, the old Islamist leaders and the technocrats. Some old leaders do not explicitly call for changes of the system and, indeed, tend to view the PJD's role more as a political instrument that, alongside the Islamist movement organizations, injects more Islamic values into policies. The PJD technocrats, in turn, do want to a much greater role for parliament and the elected government, but they want to achieve these changes through an increase in popular support that would allow them to form a cohesive government rather than through directly confronting the monarchy. Only a last group, the radicals 9, 7
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The PJD called its position “critical support” and held no ministry in the alternance government. Nevertheless, it voted for most government bills and was publicly associated with the government. Interview with a PJD leader, 7. March 2003. We call this group radicals in the meaning used in the democratization literature, not in the literature on “Islamists and democracy”. In both types of literature, radicals are less willing than the moderates to compromise with the authoritarian incumbents. Importantly, the radicals in the democratization literature are those less willing give up on democratic principles; in the literature on “Islamists and democracy”, “radicals” are viewed as less prone to accept democratic values.
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who have so far never controlled the party leadership, has been ready to denounce regime interference into party affairs or civil liberty restricting laws more openly or has sometimes rejected to swallow restrictions on mobilization. Mobilization Resources From the very beginning and particularly since the 1999 party congress, PJD technocrats aimed to develop the party organisation into a strong mobilization tool. This meant, first, to increase the party's human and infrastructural resources. In view of the importance of grass roots mobilization, the relatively small size of the MUR and the fact that the majority of the MUR members were – although not against – not interested in party politics, the party had to recruit and maintain committed members. The PJD thus invested in recruiting and socializing new members. It also opened and equipped new party bureaus, founded ancillary organizations for the Youth, Women and sympathizing cadres It raised income through membership fees and the state's party financing. Second, party organization was developed to serve as a tool to provide credibility to the PJD's message of difference with the other actors and of legitimacy of leadership decisions. Thus, the party developed a forceful discourse on internal democracy and the respect of party rules. This had also practical consequences. In a complete overhaul of the old party statutes and practices, the PJD set up comparatively democratic internal structures for selecting leaders and electoral candidates. In the 1999 party congress the party president's office was not yet up for grabs – it was reserved for Dr. Khatib, the party founder. But competitive elections were held for the post of his vice president and Saad Eddine al-Othmani won these. Importantly, the base had a strong say in choosing the candidates for the 2002 parliamentary elections. This stood in stark contrast to the party's previous practices – in 1997 candidates had been selected by the party leaders – and to those of most other Moroccan political parties. These investments in the organization did surely increase the party's mobilization capacities and increased its standing among the Moroccan political actors. It did, however, also start to put some distance between the PJD and the MUR as the organizational boundaries started to solidify and new, non-MUR affiliated members and candidates gained in importance. This is shown in the profile of the affiliations of the PJD's candidates for the 2002 elections. 10 Only 56 of the party’s 194 electoral candidates (excluding the female national list) indicated an affiliation with the MUR. One can then add another share of those where the affiliation is unknown (28) and that may in reality have been MUR members. Of the rest, another 51 candidates that indicated an affiliation to various other Islamist ‘cultural’ associations and 44 candidates appeared to have no link whatsoever with the 10
These profiles were published by Al-Tajdid before the 2002 parliamentary elections and compiled by the authors.
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Islamist movement. Overall, one can conclude that less than half of the candidates had a MUR affiliation. Had the party base, in 2002, been strictly composed of MUR members or been unequivocally loyal to the MUR, it is unlikely that they would have selected movement outsiders to represent them in parliament to such a large extent. These trends point at a process of increasing distance that would later lead to a full separation. For the 2002 elections, however, the party could still count on the MUR for electoral mobilization. The MUR was an organizational resource, although one with some demands regarding the party's choices. Mobilization Choices As mentioned above, the PJD never mobilized against the regime. Instead, faithful to its initial electoral campaign, the PJD essentially mobilized for and gained support with topics of authenticity, identity, and proximity. This made itself felt in the sometimes populist interventions of its MPs regarding the government's cooperation with the “Zionist entity” or alcoholism (where it also ran an extra-parliamentary campaign with the MUR), or in symbolic actions such as the insulting of an “improperly” dressed journalist in the parliament by PJD leader and movement veteran, Abdelilah Benkirane. The most important and visible mobilization in these years were the street protests against the reform of the personal status code as part of a government project to improve the situation of women in Morocco. These protests were organized and carried out jointly with the MUR and other Islamist groups and culminated in a large demonstration on 12. March 2000 in Casablanca, (a smaller demonstration of supporters was held in Rabat). The Islamists' opposition mainly targeted the abolition of polygamy and the women’s right to conclude marriages without a marital tutor, normally her father; but the protest was also conducted as a general campaign against the "secularist and francophone elites" and the "foreign powers that financed the plan in order to strip the country of its Islamic identity and heritage" (see Zerhouni 2004). It also conducted a campaign against a government project for micro-credits, claiming that their interest based financing was un-Islamic. In this context, the PJD withdrew its support for the alternance government and changed it to what it termed “constructive opposition”. Besides such more spectacular events, the PJD cultivated its image as a party of proximity with the people, an important issue in a country where the majority of the people distrust politicians and view political parties as tools through which politicians advance their personal interests. The PJD, in contrast, established an image of hard-working defenders of the citizens' interests. PJD MPs, in spite of not being very numerous, asked the largest number of oral questions between 1997 and 2002 and a large number of written ones. They also opened bureaus in their electoral districts in 9
which they collected the demands of citizens and then rendered accounts on what they had done regarding a particular question. The existence of these bureaus, their response to requests and the fact that – contrary to popular practice – MPs did not change their mobile phone numbers after the elections, stood indeed in marked difference with the established Moroccan parties. The PJD's electoral platform for the 2002 elections was entitled "Toward a Better Morocco" and centered on five axes: Authenticity, Sovereignty, Democracy, Justice, and Development. The part on authenticity contained most explicitly the "Islam" part of the PJD's message. It called for a greater role of Islam in education and public life and for the strengthening of Morocco’s Islamic identity. The section on development rose concerns about economic globalization and called for Islamic banks. Democracy and Justice advocated the strengthening of the rule of law and the prerogatives of parliament and the Prime Minister. Sovereignty contained what Willis rightly calls the "obligatory nod towards nationalism and Morocco's claim to the Western Sahara" (2004: 65). The campaign was similar to the last one. The MUR's militants were all pushed to perform door-to-door canvassing, and al-tajdid, the MUR's newspaper ran daily articles on the PJD's program, presented each of the almost 200 electoral candidates with photos and short cvs, and published favorable accounts of the PJD's activities in parliament. Lots of emphasis was made on the difference of the PJD to other Moroccan parties, its sincerity and proximity with the people. Electoral Support in 2002 The 2002 elections can be used more productively than those of 1997 to understand support for the PJD. These elections were more transparent (although with still important deficiencies) and include districts that can be linked quite reliably to the municipalities in the 2004 census.11 The number of votes obtained by the party increased dramatically relative to 1997. The figure more than doubled to 595 459, which transformed into 42 parliamentary seats.12 Part of this rise in votes is likely to follow from the decrease in electoral fraud by the regime, another part could be attributed to the fact that the party increased its coverage, although this increase was comparatively small (the coverage increased only from 44% to 61%). At the same time, it is likely that the way the PJD positioned itself in the Moroccan party landscape – as the new clean party that lives up to its promises of proximity – appealed to the voters. Moreover, its organisational investments had increased its electoral mobilization capacities. Indeed, local leaders felt that their constant activities throughout the years had allowed them to mobilize voters easily in the elections.13 11 12
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For details of the merging of the two types of data, see Pellicer 2008. According to allusions of a party leaders and rumors, the PJD even won the elections but after being convoked to the ministry of the interior on the night of the elections agreed to take the 3rd rank. Interviews PJD local secretaries, 6. December 2003, 12. November 2003, 9. November 2003, and 18. November 2003.
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It is not clear how consciously the PJD's mobilization choices were tailored for a particular electorate, whether they simply reflected what the party intuitively felt would appeal to Moroccan voters, or whether they just reflected the leadership's own policy preferences. In any case, after the 2002 elections, party leaders believed that they had gained support beyond their core Islamist supporter, namely from two groups: One to which the PJD's message of honesty, anti-corruption and transparency appealed, and another of disaffected voters of other parties. Indeed, party leaders were aware that these different groups had different expectations vis-a-vis the party. According to party leaders, the core voters of the party were Islamist activists or strong sympathisers and expected policy gains in terms of “Islamic values”. The second group did not care much about these values for policies but expected a PJD government/ or a cabinet in which the PJD would be to be less corrupt, etc. The third group, in turn wanted an improvement of the socio-economic conditions, that is, better public services and job-creation.14 What were the socio-economic characteristics of the people who voted for the PJD? In which type of district did it obtain most support? Table 3 shows the profile of the 2002 districts that the PJD did not cover, and where it obtained little and large support (less and more than 6% of registered voters, respectively). The patterns in the table are clear. The districts covered by the PJD tended to be more urban, and to include people with more education, with more resources (such as satellite dishes and mobile phones) and with better houses. Under the sensible assumption that the PJD mainly covered places where it knew itself and/or the Islamist movement had an infrastructure, the party's coverage choices already reveal that it thought that its support among the rural, uneducated and poor population was smaller. The evidence in the table shows that this perception seems to have been actually correct. Comparing the places where the party fared better and worse, it is obvious that it did better, again, in more urban places, with more education, etc. Overall, the urban bias of PJD support clearly remained in these elections. Moreover, the figures in the table suggest that the PJD, in its coverage, had already surpassed the organizational infrastructure of the Islamist movement and was attempting to expand. This is shown in the table by the fact that the districts that the PJD covered, but where it was not successful (column 2 in the table), had a profile much more similar to those the PJD did not cover, than to those where it was successful. The districts where the party obtained most support reveal additional interesting information (see again Table 1). The 10 districts where the PJD obtained the largest percent of vote in 2002 (out of registered voters) were located in or around Casablanca, Meknes, Fes, Tangier and Agadir. With the exception of Meknes, these are the same areas of success as in 1997. This suggests that the support of the MUR remained crucial for the party's success and that the party's 1997 MPs had done their 14
Interviews with PJD leaders, 17.November 2003, 4.September 2003, 6. November 2003.
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job to the satisfaction of their voters, possibly helped through their proximity-bureaus. Interestingly, the same areas appear in the subsequent ten districts in 2002 (in the positions 11 to 20, not reported), although the area around Rabat appears as a prominent addition to the list. It appears that Rabat was becoming more prominent as a source of support. As above, a useful way to move beyond the obvious urban bias of PJD supporters is to look at variation in PJD support within Casablanca. Figure 1 relates the percent of votes obtained by the PJD in different Casablanca districts to their degree of illiteracy. Districts in Casablanca with more illiteracy tended to support the PJD more. The same pattern emerges when considering other (unreported) indicators of affluence, such as the percent of bathrooms or satellite dishes in the district. The electoral districts of 2002 were highly aggregate so that this result needs to be taken with caution; moreover, the tendency shown in the figure is not enormously strong. Nevertheless, the same overall trend appears even moving beyond Casablanca: among the (largely urban) districts where the PJD obtained good results, those where results were best tended to be less well off than those just good. Overall, it appears that the PJD had little success among the rural largely illiterate population, but that among the urban areas, in 2002 it did have appeal in the poorer districts. IV. 2002 – 2007: Hitting the Glass Ceiling Political Context, Political Constraints The terrorist attacks of 16 May 2003 in Casablanca were the most decisive event for shaping the PJD's itinerary in the 2002-2007 period. Simultaneous suicide bombings targeted a Jewish community centre, a Spanish restaurant and social club, a hotel and the Belgian consulat, and killed 43 people and wounded over 100. Morocco having been so far spared terrorist attacks, they were traumatizing for the society. Politically, they led to a general crackdown on Islamist groups and to restrictions on civil liberties. As to the PJD, the attacks became a resource for the party's opponents that had felt threatened by its rise in the elections. Left parties ran a campaign against it, holding it morally responsible for the attacks and calling upon it to apologize to the Moroccan people. 15 The regime, in turn, made it difficult for the PJD to distance itself publicly from the attacks by not allowing it to declare – as all the other parties – its opposition against terrorism and its solidarity with the families of the victims via the national TV stations and by banning anti-terrorism demonstrations the PJD wanted to 15
See, for instance, the interview of the USFP leader Mohammed El-Yazghi in Aujourd’hui le Maroc, 6.6.2003. ‘Clarté et engagement. Le PJD doit présenter des excuses au peuple marocain’, available on: http://ambaframa.org/presse. In that interview, El-Yazghi argues that the PJD had to "apologize to the Moroccan people". It had "rendered Morocco more fertile for terrorist activities" by "preaching a discourse of hatred and exclusion" and by "mobilizing thousands of people in summer camps which it had transformed into sites of training and ideological indoctrination".
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organize. It also used the PJD's vulnerability after the attacks to intervene into party affairs by having the rather outspoken party leader Mustapha Ramid removed as chair of the parliamentary group and by signaling to the party that he could not be the party's president. 16 Moreover, it forced the party to reduce its coverage of the communal elections in September 2003 to only 16% of the available seats and to enact a system of partial coverage in big and medium sized cities that would prevent it from gaining the city hall in these towns. 17 Opposing these restrictions would most likely have come at a cost of a party ban. The PJD tried to portray these decisions as autonomous ones, taken for the “good of the Moroccan people” but leaders admitted that they had been “contacted by the ministry of interior”.18 This context affected the PJD's itinerary heavily, leading to changes in the party organization, the party's relationship with the Islamist movement and in the topics around which it centered its mobilization. As to the currents inside the party, May 16 led to the rise in power and, later, as the party failed to win the 2007 elections, the decline of the technocrats. Mobilization Resources The leadership, and especially the technocrats, aimed to maintain the party as a mobilization tool. It sought to combine the party base's involvement and loyalty with relatively predictable outcomes regarding the selection of leaders and candidates. The 2004 party congress was an occasion to demonstrate the its internal democracy and activism. The congress was attended by 2000 delegates and its very holding was an important event in Moroccan politics where parties are more often than not weak organizations and have postponed their congresses for years. The election of a new leadership by the congress delegates of a new leadership also stood in stark contrast with the autocratic structures of most Moroccan parties where a new leadership mostly came in with the death of the former leader. The decisions associated with saving the party's legality, however, forced the party to become more autocratic, as the leadership believed that the necessity of these decisions would not be well understood by the base. Postulating that there was need for an equilibrium between the “interests between the party an the interests of the militants”, the leadership adopted several strategies to defend what they viewed as the interests of the party: The selection procedure of the candidates for the 2003 local elections gave much less power to the party base than the 2002 one; in fact, the leadership intervened strongly in the selection, eliminated names from the lists and parachuted 16
17
18
Ramid had, for instance, denounced the “undemocratic” ways in which the PJD was treated after 16 May 2003 and the pressures of the ministry of the interior. In Casablanca, the PJD covered 8 out of 16 city districts, in Fes 4/6, in Marrakesh, Rabat and Salé 3/5, in Tanger nothing because there was a local “revolt” against the partial coverage system. Interview with a PJD leader, 12. November 2003.
13
technocrats and some women into secure positions. Similarly, the election of the new party leadership in 2004 was filtered through the party's national council that pre-selected three candidates for the final election by the congress. And whereas the 1999 congress had taken vital decisions, such as the limited coverage, the 2004 congress was more a discussion forum than the party's most vital legislative body. Finally, the national council – a body supposedly supervising the General Secretariat more closely – was often convened with too little time to elaborate counterproposals to the ones of the General Secretariat.19 Most of these instruments to decrease the party base's influence on vital decisions were hidden in complicated procedures and many members still – rightly – viewed the PJD as a party where the base had a say. But the decrease in power was real and had consequences: Although we cannot quantify this, the leadership's opinion after the 2007 elections was that at least the members' willingness to campaign had been put in jeopardy. 20 Ultimately, this implied that the party had become less useful as a mobilization tool. A second mobilization ressource loss in this period was the MUR itself. Behind its withdrawal of support was a decreasing influence of the MUR on PJD decisions paired with an increasing unhappiness about the content of some of these. The decrease in influence resulted from the solidification of organizational boundaries between the MUR and the PJD, itself a consequence of an increasing formalization and respect of party rules, the development of a separate organizational identity and the party's opening up to new, non-MUR, members. Mobilization Choices After 16 May 2003, the PJD changed the themes of its mobilization: it stopped any mobilization for identity and liberalization issues and focused instead on development and management topics. The halting of identity and liberalization issues was most strongly shown in its acceptance of the “antiterrorist” law and its voting for a new personal status law. The anti-terrorist law was step backwards on civil and political rights. It defined any disturbance of the public order as a terrorist act. It also contained provisions that allowed the security forces to hold suspects for twelve days without access to a lawyer and extended the number of crimes requiring the death penalty. Party leaders argued that the criminal code covered terrorist crimes sufficiency and had opposed the bill strongly since it had been proposed by the government in the spring. After 16 May, the party believed that it could not afford to be seen as opposing anti-terrorist legislation and endorsed the bill in parliament. Similar thoughts were behind the PJD's vote for the change of the personal status code that the King 19 20
Interview with a PJD provincial secretary/ member of the National Council, 6. December 2003. Interviews with PJD leaders, 1. and 2. November 2007.
14
proposed in autumn of 2003. Although the content of the law was similar to the one the Islamist movement had denounced as un-Islamic and promoting immorality, the PJD now endorsed it in parliament and qualified it as a pioneer project that served the family and women and constituted a qualitative gain for the whole of the Moroccan people.21 This type of decisions obviously does not indicate a real shift of the PJD's political convictions but was deemed necessary to appease the palace and the political elites. That identity and political liberalization topics were substituted with management and development topics (and not with something else), however, was the result of PJD's technocrats coming to dominate the party’s leadership. The new preference for management/development was, for instance, shown in the party’s platform for 2003 and the way in which it campaigned. It focused mainly on improving public services and fighting corruption. In the campaign meetings, the emphasis was on the ability and educational level of the candidates – instead of grand speeches there were lengthy power-point presentations of the candidates.22 As to the local governance itself, it appears that the PJD did abstain from pushing for morality or against alcohol (even though the party governed Meknes, the city of Morocco’s greatest wine producer).23 At the national level, the PJD focused on becoming an acceptable future governing party. Already in 2005, five members of the party’s general secretariat traveled to Europe to meet politicians and explain its political positions and thus decrease fears abroad. Among others, the delegation traveled to Morocco's crucial trade and aid partners, Spain and France, to meet with senior politicians there. In Spain, they met with the vice-president of the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Party) and the president of the right-leaning People’s Party, the president of Spain’s employers’ association, and the President of the Spanish Congress. The PJD delegation even took part in a ceremony commemorating the victims of the attacks of 11 March 2004 in Madrid (Boubekeur and Amghar 2006). In Paris, they were however less well received, Francois Bayroux being the only senior politician willing to meet the delegation.24 In 2006, secretary general El-Othmani went on a visit to the US, meeting among others, members of congress (Niah 2006). From 2006 onwards, such public relations' activities became indeed even more necessary. In April 2006, a poll of the International Republican Institute made the headlines of the Moroccan press. 25 The poll found that the party may gain up to 47% of the popular vote. Although the party did not think it would gain that many votes, it did its own polls and believed it would gain around 60-70 21 22
23 24 25
See al-‘Asr, 17.10.2003 and al-Tajdid, 13.10.2003. Although not being an exhaustive view, these observations apply as much to poor neighborhoods (such as Yaqub al mansur in Rabat) as to good ones (such as Meknes). see Le Monde, 'Meknès, cœur des paradoxes marocains', 7.09.2007. Interview with a PJD leader, 2. November 2007. See Aujourd'hui Le Maroc, 14.4.2006.
15
seats (Boudarham 2006; Dahbi 2007). Since then, the PJD was considered and considered itself as the future leader of the Moroccan government and did not want to jeopardize this status. 26 Even if felt that it had (re)gained the acceptance of the Moroccan elites by 2004 27, it remained fearful to mobilize the street. For instance, it abstained from organizing public meetings or demonstrations against a highly unpopular increase of the VAT, even if opposed the bill in parliament.28 Its 2007 electoral platform – its content and the way it was designed – reflected perhaps most strongly the PJD’s technocratic shift and its ambition to govern. The party established 36 commissions that spent almost half a year polling Moroccans regarding their main concerns and examining current public policies in a given domain as well as the impact of international actors and other constraints in that policy area. After that, the party decided whether it proposed a new policy or the adjustment of existing policies. The platform also set targets regarding, for instance, the decrease of poverty or illiteracy. This way of designing the program - first examining what people care about and then trying to tailor a program that responds to the main concerns of the society – had obviously a strong electoralist component. In view of the small interest of Moroccans in electoral platforms, however, it showed more importantly the desire to succeed in governance. As a result, the PJD's 2007 electoral platform was quite different from 2002. It stressed issues such as health, education and the investment climate whereas issues of Islam or constitutional changes were not mentioned. Contrary to the previous elections, the MUR did not support the PJD's campaign. In the run up to the 2007 parliamentary elections, there was no media campaign and no door to door campaigning of the MUR. The MUR even refused to officially endorse the PJD and also forbade its preachers to advocate the PJD in their sermons. To make this point even more visible, the MUR forbade its own leadership to run in elections. Electoral Support in 2007 The 2007 elections yield the most reliable analysis of the three elections covered in this paper. First, the elections were considered by international observers as, overall, transparent (NDI 2007). There were some isolated irregularities and widespread accusations of vote buying, but systematic fraud was ruled out.29 Second, the electoral districts can be easily merged with the 2004 census data, for the administrative boundaries were the same in the two years. 26
27
28 29
It had passed unnoticed that the poll asked for the voter’s preferences if voting was mandatory. Thus, it probably reflected the fact that Moroccans consider the PJD the least bad of the political parties, not that voters would turn out massively to support the PJD. The King had sent a note to the party congratulating the PJD for its party congress and the USFP had sent a delegation to the congress. Interview with a PJD leader, 2. November 2007. Vote buying does not create problems of reliability because it does express a voter preference, namely to sell his vote, rather than cast it on programmatic terms.
16
The PJD obtained in these elections more votes than any other party although this did not transform into the highest number of seats in parliament. It was the Istiqlal party that actually “won” the elections. The turnout for the elections was extremely low: 37%, including those depositing nul votes. In some districts, particularly in well-off districts with high levels of education, turnout was as low as 20%. According to official figures, 503 396 people voted for the PJD. This was not so different from the amount of votes the party received in 2002. However, a closer look at the data suggests that support actually decreased. The PJD increased its coverage in 2007 to all districts, thus increasing its votes in a “mechanical” way. That the total number of votes remained the same means that the party actually lost support in the areas it was already covering. Different to its rise between 1997 and 2002, the PJD had thus failed to successfully mobilize its voters in 2007. Figure 2 makes this point clearly. The figure shows the distribution of votes of the PJD across districts, for 2002 and for 2007 (i.e. the share of districts in which the PJD obtained different percent of votes, given in the horizontal axis). The left-ward “hump” has moved from 0% in 2002 to 3% in 2007, reflecting the increase in coverage. The rightward “hump” has moved in the other direction, from 8% to less than 6%, and this suggests that the PJD actually lost support in its “strongholds”. Besides this, it is also interesting to notice from the figure the small “hump” at the extreme right side of the 2007 graph. This reflects two districts (Larache and Oued Zem-Bejaad), where the PJD obtained unusually large support in 2007. After the elections, party leaders blamed first and foremost their electoral failure on vote buying practices. In their analysis of their electorate, they no longer mentioned the three groups of supporters of 2002. Rather, they all agreed that their core constituency was the educated middle class. For them, the poor were a “fluid group”, that was ready to sell their vote to other parties. The analysis of the electoral results of 2007 is largely in accordance with these ideas and yields additional insights. Table 4 shows the profiles of the 2007 districts where the PJD obtained high and low levels of support, adding in the third column the districts of very high success, Larache and Oued Zem-Bejaad (L & OZB). A comparison of the first two columns of the table show that the districts where the PJD obtained high support were more urbanized, with more education, and more resources than where they obtained low support. This is the same pattern as found in 2002. Overall, the support of the PJD remained essentially urban. In contrast, to this pattern, the last column shows that the places where the PJD did unusually well (L & OZB), are not the most urban, educated, etc. Quite the contrary, these are “average” districts in terms of all these variables and were not among the PJD's top ten districts in 1997 or 2002 (see Table 1). Why was the PJD so successful there? One plausible answer is local governance. Among 17
the few places where the PJD managed to lead the city government in 2003 we indeed find Ksar el Kbir and Oued Zem, the two largest towns of the electoral districts of Larache and of Oued ZemBejaad, respectively. Local governance may have helped boost support for the PJD in different ways: through good governance or through clientelistic practices. This question deserves further treatment to be undertaken in future research. Another remarkable observation regarding the 2007 results is the substantial change in the districts where the PJD fared best, compared to 1997 and 2002. In 2007, the list is not any more dominated by Casablanca, Fes, Agadir and Tanger, as in 1997 and in 2002. Most notably, after L & OZB, the three districts of most success are all in or around Rabat. Only after the 5 th position do we find districts in Casablanca and Fes, with Tangier and Agadir around the 20 th position. The comparison between Rabat and Casablanca in 2002 and 2007 is enlightening. In 2002, the PJD obtained an average of 9.3 votes in Casablanca as opposed to 7.2 in Rabat and Sale. In 2007, the order had reversed, with 6.4 for Rabat-Sale and only 4.5 for Casablanca. This change in the places of electoral support – constant in the two previous elections – is likely to be linked to the loss of the MUR as a source of providing credibility and assisting the party in electoral mobilization. It appears that this loss was strongly felt precisely in the places where the PJD started out strongly. While the overall pattern of PJD support remained the same (the importance of urbanization, education,etc.), the geography of the most successful areas changed. Did this also apply to Casablanca, a particularly relevant area? Figure 3 shows the relation of PJD votes with illiteracy in different districts of Casablanca for the 2007 elections (the equivalent of Figure 1 for 2002). The relation is clearly negative, with the PJD obtaining more votes in districts with less illiteracy. The pattern actually is the same using other indicators of wealth and affluence: In 2007 the PJD was more successful in better-off areas of Casablanca. The least success was actually in areas with predominance of Bidonvilles. In these areas, the percent of support was close the overall Moroccan average (around 3%). These results contrast sharply with those for 2002, as is clear from comparing figures 1 and 3. From 2002 to 2007, the pattern actually reversed: the appeal of the PJD seems to have moved in Casablanca from poorer areas to wealthier areas. Put in another way: the PJD lost support everywhere in Casablanca, but particularly in less well off quarters. VI. Discussion and Concluding Remarks In 2002, the PJD was set on of what looked like a promising trajectory. It had invested in its organization, which was growing and internally) institutionalizing. The party had worked hard on an image of cleanness, good management and hard work. It complied with the rules of the game, not ever crossing the “red lines” associated with formal political participation in Morocco, thus 18
protecting the legal status of its organization and becoming acceptable for the established actors. It had followed a strategy that focussed on increasing electoral support and it seemed that the strategy was paying off. There was a widespread consensus that the party would win the 2007 parliamentary elections, and the party was preparing itself for the event. The PJD, however, did not win the 2007 elections and, as we have shown, even lost support. A discussion of the reasons why the promising trajectory of the PJD grew to a halt are can highlight the relevance of the themes this project covers. The most immediate reasons why the PJD did not win the 2007 elections have to do with the intensity of its electoral mobilization or, rather, its lack of it. Two types of actors are worth emphasizing in this respect: PJD members and the MUR. PJD members were less prone to mobilize for a party that had become less transparent and democratic in itself, where they felt they had less of a say in its decisions. The procedure to select the candidates for the 2007 elections that allowed for more intervention of the party leadership than the previous of 2002 had caused so much unhappiness that party leaders even refrained from exploiting it completely. As leaders observed themselves, why would a member do the door-to-door canvassing for a candidate that he had not chosen?30 Such a lack of enthusiasm of PJD members in the electoral campaign was even more painful in view of the simultaneous withdrawal of support by the MUR, in itself a substantial loss of mobilization resources at the disposal of the party. As we will discuss below, the consequences of the MUR withdrawal went probably beyond the electoral mobilization intensity and also included credibility costs. But the absence of a media campaign similar to 2002 in favor of the PJD and surely of the “physical” support previously provided by the MUR made itself felt. As one party leader mentioned, MUR members were “more disciplined”, i.e. if they were told to cover neighborhoods they would reliably do this. 31 The fact that the districts where the party was most successful remained similar from 1997 to 2002, but then changed substantially in 2007 points at the importance of the MUR withdrawal for the 2007 results. The changed themes of mobilization were probably a second important reason for the 2007 “failure”. The party changed its emphasis from identity issues to management issues. According to a party leader, this might have been an impopular shift, particularly regarding the poorest segments of the population.32 The evidence presented above, indeed, suggests that in Casablanca the PJD lost support particularly in the poorer districts. More evidence is needed on this insight but, if correct, it points at an interesting puzzle. An NDI report, based on focus groups, concludes that the main concerns of citizens were related to socioeconomic problems, not identity ones (NDI 2007b). The 30 31 32
Interviews with PJD leaders, 1. and 2. November 2007. Interview with a PJD leader, 3. November 2007. Interview with a member of the PJD National Council, 10. August 2008.
19
fact that an Islamist party may have lost a substantial amount of support by precisely shifting its emphasis from identity to “good management” seems at odds with the evidence. One possible answer is that the PJD addressed socioeconomic problems in an increasingly “realistic” style, being aware of budgetary constraints and fearing to make populist promises it would not be able to keep. A second answer to the the puzzle may pass through the importance of credibility in such systems, a topic to be developed below. All these choices, in turn, can be (at least partially) explained by two key and interrelated features of the environment: 1) an authoritarian setting with 2) a predominance of clientelistic linkages. The first way in which this setting is relevant is as mediator for the effect of the May 16 terrorist attacks in Casablanca. This event is of utmost importance for understanding the trajectory we have discussed, but its importance its not direct. To preserve its legality, the PJD took a number of steps that neither corresponded to its policy preferences nor to the strategy it had devised to increase its power in the future. The party's endorsement of the personal status code must have alienated core voters caring about the “Islam” part. In turn, the decrease in and partiality of coverage of the 2003 communal elections deprived it of a relevant source to gain experience and support through governing more municipalities. Of course, these were deliberate choices of the PJD. Had it been willing to jeopardize its legality, it could have been more assertive towards the regime. By that time, however, the PJD had already invested so much in its organization that it appears that this was not anymore an option for the majority of the party leaders. The authoritarian and clientelistic setting mattered not only through its impact on party choices but also for the expectations of citizens regarding what a party government can actually achieve in Morocco. The previous expectations towards the alternance government had changed into frustration. The failure to change the socio-economic and political situation in Morocco was viewed as a failure of these parties but also sharpened the awareness that the power center remained outside the elected institutions. This was probably relevant for discouraging middle class segments to see in the PJD a viable alternative with the capacity to “change things”. The incredibly small turnout of the 2007 elections and the fact that turnout was smallest in urban middle class districts is evidence to this effect. The clientelistic environment also posed a relevant problem. Generally, it is difficult for a programmatic party to survive in a clientelistic environment. When one can sell ones vote, what incentive does one have to vote for a programmatic party? What everyone would want is for the others to vote for the programmatic party that promises good management and then to sell one's own vote. But a possibly more relevant factor regarding clientelism in this context has to do with credibility. In a context where linkages between citizens and parties are largely clientelistic and 20
where the typical exchange is votes for patronage, money or other types of favors, it is extremely difficult for a new party to convince citizens that it is different. Different from the argument above, this is not related to whether a party can change things but to whether it would change things if in power. Indeed, the typical attitude towards politicians is that they are egoistic and cannot be trusted. In that respect, the loss of the MUR would have been particularly painful for the PJD, because it provided a credibility to the PJD's claim of difference with the standard Moroccan party. References: Boubekeur, Amel and Samir Amghar 2006. Islamist Parties in the Maghreb and Their Links with EU: Mutual
Influences and the Dynamics of Democratisation. EuroMesco http://www.euromesco.net/images/55_eng.pdf (Accessed April 1, 2008).
Paper
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55.
Boudarham Mohamed. 2006. Lahcen Daoudi : 'Selon notre sondage, nous aurons 40% des voix'. Aujourd’hui Le Maroc, 5.11.2006, p.1. Dahbi Omar. 2007. 'El Othmani estime que le PJD aura entre 60 et 70 députés'. Aujourd’hui Le Maroc, 24.8.2007, p.3. Munson, Henry Jr., 1986. ‘The Social Base of Islamic Militancy in Morocco’, The Middle East Journal, 30 (2), pp.267-284. Munson, Henry Jun., 1993. ‘The Political Role of Islam in Morocco (1970-90)’, in George Joffé, (ed.), North Africa: Nation, State, and Region. London: Routledge, pp.187-202. Nachtwey, Jody and Mark Tessler, 1999. ‘Explaining Women’s Support for Political Islam: Contributions from Feminist Theory’, in Tessler et al. (eds.), Area Studies and Social Science Strategies for Understanding Middle East Politics. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, pp.48-69. NDI 2007a. Preliminary Statement of the International Observer Delegation to Morocco's 2007 Legislative Elections. Rabat. Pellicer, Miquel, 2008. 'Who supports Islamist parties: The Case of Morocco”. Paper presented at the APSA meeting, Boston, August 2008. Shahin, Emad Eldin, 1998. Political Ascent. Contemporary Islamic Movements in North Africa. Boulder, Co.: Westview Press. Tozy, Mohamed, 1999. Monarchie et Islam politique au Maroc. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. Tozy, Mohamed, 1999b. ‘Réformes politiques et transition démocratique’, Monde arabe Maghreb Machrek, 164 (avril-juin), pp.67-84. U.S. Department of State 1998. Morocco Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1998 [online], available on: www.usembassy.ma/themes/CivilSociety/us.htm [accessed 7.12.2004]. Willis, Michael J. 1999. Between Alternance and the Makhzen. At-Tawhid wa al-Islah's Entry into Moroccan Politics', Journal of North African Studies, 4 (3), pp.45-80. Willis, Michael J., 2004. ‘Morocco’s Islamists and the Legislative Elections of 2002: The Strange Case of a Party That Did Not Want to Win’, Mediterranean Politics, 9 (1), pp.53-81.
21
22
Table 1: Districts where the PJD obtained largest percent of votes in 1997, 2002 and 2007
1997
2002
2007
1 Sadri-Raja (Casablanca)
Al Ismailia (Meknes)
Larache
2 Idrissa (Casablanca)
Moulay Rachid Sidi Othmane (Casablanca)
Oued zem- Bejaad
3 Dchira (Agadir)
Inezgane-Ait Melloul (~Agadir)
Rabat-Challah (Rabat)
4 Sidi el-Mendri (Tetouan)
Fes Jdid Dar Bibagh (Fes)
Skhirate-Temara (~Rabat)
5 Bouchentouf (Casablanca)
Sidi Bernoussi Zenata (Casablanca)
Rabat-el Mouhit (Rabat)
6 Tanger Boukhalef (Tanger)
Tanger-Assilah (Tanger)
Hay Hassani (Casablanca)
7 Chrarda (Fes)
Ain Sebaa Hay Mohammadi (Casablanca)
Fes-Janoubia (Fes)
8 Oujda Bouknadel (Oujda)
Al Fida Mers Sultan (Casablanca) Kenitra (Kenitra)
9 Bab Jedid (Casablanca)
Beni Mellal
Ain Chock (Casablanca)
Anfa (Casablanca)
Fes Chamalia (Fes)
10
23
Table 2: Profile of selected districts won by the PJD in 1997
El Idrissia
Prefecture Al Fida-Derb Casablanca Bouchentouf Sultan Region
Unemployment
24
26
25
22
Analphabetism
28
32
30
31
Schooling rate
91
89
90
89
WC
96
96
96
91
Bathrooms
27
15
21
32
Slums
1
2
2
12
Villa/Appartements
4
9
9
23
24
Table 3: Profile districts 2002 by PJD coverage and electoral performance PJD Votes
Not Covered
(0,6]
(6,16]
Number of districts
35
28
28
Urban
40
48
80
Education
Analphabetism College
51 2.9
47 3.6
33 7.6
Resources
Satellite dish Mobile Phone Poverty
26 51 17.2
29 56 17.3
42 68 8.9
Occupation
Employer
1.7
1.7
2.2
Self empl with shop
25
22
15
Self empl at home
2.4
2.4
1.7
Self empl ambulant
6.7
7.2
8.7
Public employee
13
12
15
Private employee
31
38
49
Helping the family
19
15.6
6.5
0.64 0.83 41 7.6 45
1.32 3.55 47 6.4 38
3.26 12.51 58 9.1 13
Housing Type
Villa Apartment Moroccan house Slum Rural
25
Table 4: : Profile districts 2007 by PJD electoral performance
(0,4]
(4,8]
L & OZB (8,12]
Number of districts
68
24
2
Urban
45
79
50
Education
Analphabetism College
48 4
33 7
50 3
Resources
Satellite dish Mobile Phone Poverty
28 54 16
42 69 10
26 51 15
Occupation
Employer
PJD Votes
Housing Type
2
2
2
Self empl with shop Self empl at home
23 2
15 2
26 5
Self empl ambulant Public employee
7 12
9 16
9 10
Private employee Helping the family
36 17
49 7
27 21
Villa Apartment Moroccan house Slum Rural
1 2 44 8 40
3 14 57 10 13
1 1 48 7 41
26
Figure 1: Votes PJD vs. Illiteracy (Analph) in Casablanca in 2002
27
Figure 2: Density PJD votes in 2002 and 2007
28
Figure 3: Votes PJD vs. Illiteracy (Analph) in Casablanca in 2007
29
