Rabat

- Just hours after the Moroccan Minister of Interior announced the preliminary results of the parliamentary elections, which showed that the Justice and Development Party, which led the ruling coalition in the past ten years, came in eighth place after it topped the 2011 and 2016 elections, the party leadership announced its resignation this evening, Wednesday.

The party’s general secretariat described the election results as “incomprehensible and illogical and do not reflect the reality of the political map in our country, the party’s position and position in the political scene, its outcome in managing local and governmental affairs, and the broad response of citizens to the party during the electoral campaign.”

After that, the General Secretariat announced the resignation of its members, led by General Secretary Saad Eddin El Othmani, while continuing to manage the party's affairs.

Suleiman Al-Amrani, the resigned Deputy Secretary-General, said in a press conference in which he read out the statement of the General Secretariat that the General Secretariat bears its full political responsibility for its management of this stage and calls for holding an extraordinary session of the National Assembly on Saturday, 18 September, for a comprehensive evaluation of the electoral benefits and taking appropriate decisions. He called for expediting the convening of an extraordinary national congress of the party as soon as possible.

These developments came less than 24 hours after the polls closed on Wednesday in Morocco, where news of the party's decline began to trickle in from its previous strongholds of victory, especially in major cities where the party had comfortable seats.

Moroccan and international public opinion followed the statement of the Ministry of the Interior at dawn today, Thursday, with the preliminary results after counting 96% of the votes, in which the Justice and Development ranked eighth with 13 seats, which party leaders and observers considered as a resounding defeat that represented the worst of the most scenarios. Which expected his defeat, so what broke the back of the Justice and Development?

Criticisms and analyzes overlapped the reasons for this resounding decline of the Islamic Party, which led the government coalition during the last ten years in the Kingdom.

The election results placed Justice and Development in eighth place after the 2016 elections (Anatolia)

driving error

Before the party leadership announced its resignation, prominent leaders in the party criticized the performance of its leadership, which they accused of having brought the party to these results, which they described as an endless series of harsh descriptions.

The most prominent calls came from the former Secretary-General of the party and former Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane, as the leader of the Justice and Development Party, Amina Maa El-Enein, wrote - in a post on her Facebook page - "The truth is that our party was throughout the previous period a large party with a small leadership."

"The moment is a moment of acknowledgment of mistakes and showing the virtue of criticism, and one of the causes of defeat was deafening the voice of sincere criticism, and giving way to the voices of cheers and applause for a politically and morally cowardly slogan entitled silence and achievement," as stated in her blog.

"People felt the party's abandonment of real battles, its abandonment of politics with a withdrawn, silent and hesitant leadership on most of the core issues, so they abandoned it," Maa Al-Aynain said.

Reasons for defeat..


In this context, the Director of the Institute for Policy Analysis, Muhammad Mesbah, believes that the reasons for the defeat of Justice and Development are more related to the party's self-discipline than to the political environment.

Mosbah - in a statement to Al Jazeera Net - explained the retreat by what he described as "a series of decisions and setbacks made by the current leadership of the party since the last elections, including the retreat in the issue of normalization with Israel, the legalization of cannabis, dealing with the Arabic language, and weakness on the communicative level," and in his opinion. The current leadership is responsible for all of this.


Paradoxes of laws

Perhaps the most noticeable thing to observers is that the new election laws, which the party has long criticized and considered to weaken its chances of winning the elections, especially the electoral divide and lowering the threshold, came to be the reason for the party’s obtaining some seats.

Here, Misbah sees that the influence of the external and political environment factor and the electoral law was limited, and explains, "I thought that the electoral denominator would have negative effects on the party's results, but now it appears that the punishment was on the government's performance and the performance of the current leadership of the party."

The Justice and Development Party lost 112 seats in the 2021 elections, compared to what it obtained in 2016, which observers considered as a loss of the votes of the party's base, part of its members, and the civilized middle class, which was described as an electoral punishment.

The Moroccan vote punished the Justice and Development without the rest of the ruling coalition parties (Anatolia)

"Justice" fell, "the coalition" remained

Misbah explains the public’s punishment of the Justice and Development Party more than other parties as “disappointing the hopes of its voters.” He added that the citizens’ expectations were greater than the Justice and Development Party, as it made electoral promises in 2011 and 2016 on the basis of undertaking major political and institutional reforms, in addition to promising more of its ability to implement.

For his part, the thinker and political analyst, Muhammad Jabroun, does not believe that the electoral punishment of the Justice and Development Party was due to the government's performance.

He told Al Jazeera Net, "We cannot explain the results obtained by the Justice and Development Party as a matter of punishment for the experience of his government and the outcome of the party in power during 10 years," and considered that the matter was hasty and a fallacy.

Gibrun went on to consider the defeat primarily linked to a political counter-mobilization, describing it as "cruel" that specifically targeted the Justice and Development Party.

Gibrun did not rule out the party's internal problems and their role in weakening it, but he suggested that the media machine attach all difficult social decisions to justice and development, even though they were taken in a broad government coalition.

He added, "If the vote was punitive against the backdrop of the government's performance, then why did not all components of the coalition be punished, and on the contrary, a major component of it (the Liberal Party that led the elections was a component of the majority of the Justice and Development Party) won."


Turning the page of Islamist rule

Observers record that Morocco is turning the page of Islamists in power through the ballot boxes as they entered them, which Gabroun considered an exceptional and positive matter and an indication that political life in Morocco is mature and dynamic, he said.

The Ministry of Interior had announced that the voter turnout amounted to 50.35%, while the participation rate in some southern regions exceeded 66%, a slight increase from the 43% recorded in the 2016 elections.