Morocco is Moderating Under Islamist Party's Rule

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Moncton NB] Times & Transcript

In the mid-1960s, the Islamic Youth in Morocco, the predecessor to the Movement for Unity and Reform (MUR) and the Party for Justice and Development (PJD), was a violent movement targeting the Moroccan monarchy.

However, a major transformation took place when a large number of MUR leaders and cadres joined the PJD, which then entered the electoral arena. Today it is legitimising the same Moroccan regime it once aimed to bring down by participating in the party system.

It contested the legislative elections of 1997 and 2002, winning 14 and 44 seats, respectively, in the 326-seat parliament. In contrast to other Islamist parties at the time, the PJD formally recognized the Moroccan monarchy.

In the next election, held in September of 2007, the PJD won 46 out of 325 seats, narrowly losing to the country’s leading political formation, the Independence Party.

The PJD increasingly adopted a moderate rhetoric that allowed it to proceed along a pragmatic, gradualist, and non-confrontational stance with the monarchy.

The Arab revolutions of 2011 also hit Morocco, with thousands of Moroccans joining nationwide protests in February. They demanded that King Muhammad VI hand over some of his powers to a newly elected government and make the justice system more independent.

A national referendum took place on July 1, 2011. A new constitution now ensures that the prime minister is selected from the party that received the most votes in elections, rather than chosen by the king.

This enabled the PJD, which won 107 seats in the November 2011election, to form a coalition with three parties that had been part of previous governments, headed by PJD leader Abdelilah Benkirane, who became prime minister.

In 2016, the party increased its numbers in parliament to 125 seats, with Saadeddine Othmani, Benkirane’s successor as leader of the party, as prime minister. He heads a coalition of six parties.

In February 2013, Benkirane stated that the PJD is an Islamist party that shares some of the same ideologies as the Muslim Brotherhood but operates “with different principles.” Benkirane denied that the PJD belongs to the global Brotherhood movement, instead claiming that each Islamist movement has “its own political thought.”

The PJD again denied affiliation with the Brotherhood in January 2015 when the PJD was publicly accused of attempting to “Islamize Moroccan society.” Benkirane reaffirmed the PJD’s Islamist agenda, but claimed that its philosophy differed from that of the Brotherhood. There was no organizational relationship between the two, he insisted.

The party considers Moroccan society as Muslim, as opposed to radical Islamists, for whom the members of any society not ruled by God’s law cannot be considered Muslim.

Since the 1990s, the PJD has paid attention to the experiences of other Islamist political parties and learned that it is safer to follow a pragmatic, gradual and progressive strategy rather than to engage in deep and comprehensive reforms.

Therefore, the PJD’s inclusion process and non-confrontational strategy is marked not only by domestic constraints but also by what the party has learned from the region, especially from its counterparts in Algeria in the 1990s, where events led to a horrific civil war.

This “Moroccan exception” has been attributed to the intimate relationship between Islam and the monarchy, to the unifying role of the king as both political arbiter and Commander of the Faithful, and to Muhammad VI’s own reformist style.

The party was opposed to the king’s recent normalization of relations with Israel, however, reiterating its “firm position against the Zionist occupation.” Some even urged Prime Minister Othamni, the party’s secretary-general, to resign from both posts. 

An element of the deal was American recognition of Morocco’s claim to sovereignty over the Western Sahara. The decades-old territorial dispute has pitted Morocco against the Algeria-backed Polisario Front, which seeks to establish an independent state. This did find favour with the PJD.

As Morocco prepares for general elections, scheduled for September this year, the PJD faces ideological divides over these issues. In March, former prime minister Abdelilah Benkirane suspended his membership in the party.

Foreign Affairs Minister Nasser Bourita has conveyed Morocco’s concerns over the recent warfare between Hamas and Israel and the PJD demanded the closure of the Israeli liaison office in the capital, Rabat.