Widely favored in last Friday’s Moroccan legislative elections, the Islamists of the Justice and Development Party will ultimately, according to initial results, send only a few additional deputies to the next Parliament. Authorized this time to present candidates across the entire territory, the PJD is likely paying the price of a skillful gerrymandering of constituencies and a particularly tightly secured electoral system. These are two elements likely to encourage a fragmentation of votes and the necessity for hazardous parliamentary coalitions, all under the rule of a sovereign who, according to the Constitution, is free to appoint a Prime Minister independently of the election results. Similar to even more “controlled” elections in other states in this region, intended, according to the regimes in power, to prevent the threat of “Islamist tidal waves,” it is uncertain whether to rejoice or lament the restrictions and the ambivalent openings of this Moroccan policy.
For the organization of this election alone cannot justify the very modest progress of the PJD. The record abstention, almost 60%, also indicates the little hope sparked among the most disadvantaged populations by the social and economic promises of this politico-religious formation. It is true that its main leaders, already in charge of important municipalities, display more concern for political legitimacy at the risk of losing the support of a more radical base, which, as a result, is quicker to join the ranks of extremists whose acts of rare violence struck Casablanca in May 2003.
From this perspective, the Sherifian kingdom is not an isolated example. The last two attacks in Algeria painfully remind us of the also limited effects of the reconciliation and openness policy launched by President Bouteflika, aimed at reclaiming former Islamists who were prevented “by force” from gaining power in the early 90s. The fortunately thwarted attempted attacks in Denmark and Germany where recent “converts” are invited to become martyrs, the reappearance of Osama bin Laden a few days before the sixth anniversary of September 11, 2001, are all elements that confirm that radical Islamism no longer intends to be seduced – nor reduced – by the legal conquest of power. Especially if they are to be content with merely sharing the prerogatives of power with an existing regime.
In this regional context, the unfolding of the Turkish experience takes on essential significance: almost the entirety of state levers is now in the hands of the AKP, another “Justice and Development Party.” Satisfactory conditions of its exercise might perhaps lead to a variant of Islamism capable of reconciling the most religious conservatives with the most demanding principles of contemporary democracies.
