New Morocco Legislature Split Evenly Among Factions

Morocco’s new legislature is split into three nearly identical blocs, election results showed Saturday, presaging months of protracted negotiations among opposition, pro-government and centrist parties.

King Hassan II had billed Friday’s vote as the culmination of a crucial set of political reforms, and his powerful interior minister, Driss Basri, hailed the results as “a victory for democracy.”

But the top opposition party, which expected to do better, claimed that the vote was marred by widespread electoral fraud, including vote-buying.

“We had hoped for a sincere election,” opposition spokesman Hafid Boutaleb said. “But this fraud had a huge impact on the results.”

It was also an election marked by apathy and general confusion. Many voters said they did not know much about the 16 competing parties, each represented by a symbol and a ballot of a different color.

Others said they stayed away from the polls because they don’t believe that political parties can solve Morocco’s most painful problem: unemployment, unofficially estimated at nearly 30%.

Voter turnout was 58.3%--one of the lowest for a national election in Morocco. Basri attributed the drop in voting to the rainy weather, but no rain fell in the country’s largest city, Casablanca.

The opposition bloc as a whole won 102 seats; the pro-government bloc won 100 seats; and a group of centrist parties won 97 seats. The rest went to smaller parties.

Boutaleb’s party, the Socialist Union of Popular Forces, won 57 seats in the 325-seat House of Representatives. All the House seats were filled through direct election for the first time.

But the party, which has been in opposition for 37 years, had hoped to form a coalition with other opposition groups. The bloc failed to garner enough votes; now negotiations will take place that could lead to myriad ruling combinations in the country of 26 million people.

Yet, regardless of which coalition ends up in power, Hassan will pick a prime minister and a new government, in consultation with the parties. He is not expected to do so until January.