Morocco: Democracy, islam, monarchy

It was the largest grant the MCC has announced since the organization was created by President George W Bush in 2004.

The grant was another example of Morocco's blend of Islam and democracy being held up as an example for the rest of North Africa and the Middle East. Morocco is praised for its free press, the free reign allowed to non-governmental organizations, the freedom of religion granted to its small Jewish minority and the legal protections given to women.

Still, democracy's role in ensuring these freedoms is limited. Power still rests with the monarchy, and the non-representative parliament has limited powers. The parliamentary elections held here on 7 September were an excellent example of how the limits of Morocco's democratic reforms have led to widespread voter dissatisfaction with the current system. This ultimately has helped to fuel an Islamist opposition, a potentially alarming prospect in a country that has seen at three suicide bombings carried out by Islamist this year.

Drift toward democracy

After ascending to the throne in 1999, King Mohammed VI began implementing reforms to increase democracy's role in Morocco. He fired Driss Basri, the powerful interior minister who was responsible for much of the political repression under his father, King Hassan, and allowed exiled dissidents to return to the country. The reforms led to parliamentary elections in 2002, which were deemed free and fair by local observers.

While the elections themselves were acceptable, the laws governing the elections ensured that the parliament would not be representative. The first-past-the-post, with single-member districts, system was changed before the elections to a system of proportional representation, with multi-member districts. Each party put forth a list of candidates equal in number to the available seats in the district, and voters chose which party they preferred. Then the party leaders determined who from the list got the seats allotted to their party.

The practical effect of the system was to ensure that no single party dominated any districts, skewing the popular vote in many cases and limiting the power of any party in the parliament.

Even if representation in the parliament was more closely correlated with election results, it is the king who ultimately controls most government decisions. He appoints most of the cabinet members, and after the 2002 elections he appointed a prime minister from outside of the political system.

Because of regulations like this, voter turnout in 2002 was around 50 percent, and reportedly more than 17 percent of voters cast blank ballots to show their opposition to the electoral laws. The turnout for local elections held since has been even lower.

In response, the government passed a new law in December 2005 to strengthen political parties. This was designed in part to focus electoral campaigns around party lines, rather than individual personalities. Further reforms enacted in early 2007 did little to change the system, but did raise the threshold required to take seats in parliament from three percent to six. However, this should strengthen the position of the main parties, where more than 30 parties competed in the elections.

Nevertheless, a pre-election report from the National Democratic Institute (NDI), a democracy advocate group that sent a delegation to monitor this year's election, warned "there could be a significant disconnect between the popular vote totals garnered by the various parties and their representation in the elected parliament."

In the run up to this year's elections, the government launched a huge campaign to sign up new