El Consejo de Europa observará por tercera vez las elecciones legislativas de Marruecos
Barring a catastrophe, Morocco will hold three simultaneous elections on 8 September. The 18 million people who make up the Moroccan electorate are called to the polls to choose their local, regional and parliamentary representatives for the next five years. This is the first time in its history that all three coincide, a factor that makes logistical deployment difficult and forces the authorities to work hard to show muscle in a region, the Maghreb, marked by institutional fragility and where democratic openness is hindered.
Morocco issued accreditations on Wednesday to 19 organisations that will deploy 100 new observers in the 12 regions of the North African country to ensure electoral integrity, the National Council for Human Rights (CNDH) said in a statement. They will be added to the 4,600 already accredited and belonging to 70 international organisations and institutions. Among the latest to receive the green light are the Arab League, the Arab Parliament, the African Centre for Conflict Prevention and the Canadian, British and Dutch embassies in Rabat, among others.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) will be one of the main institutions in charge of monitoring the elections. Approved on Wednesday among the 19 new organisations, the Strasbourg-based European body will send an 11-member mission to Morocco, led by Italian Alberto Ribolla, to observe the parliamentary elections. At the same time, a delegation from the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, attached to the Council of Europe, will observe the elections at the municipal and provincial levels.
The European delegation will be in the country from 6 to 9 September. They will meet with the president of the 'Association for Democracy' delegation of the Moroccan Parliament to the PACE, the director of the electoral department of the Ministry of the Interior and several representatives of the international community, civil society and the media. All of this prior to the counting of the votes, according to the body. In addition, a member of the Venice Commission, a legal expert group linked to the Council of Europe, will advise the body during the visit.
The CNDH will also provide legal information on the Moroccan electoral process in a series of press conferences arranged exclusively for international observers. The monitoring will continue until 5 October, when Morocco will host the election of the members of the Chamber of Councillors, the Moroccan upper house whose functioning is similar to that of a normal Senate. This will close the circle that began on 23 March, when the president of the CNDH, Amina Bouayach, began preparations to set up an independent electoral observation body.
Local media close to Rabat maintain that there is still a possibility of postponing the elections despite the pandemic having passed its peak. The most plausible scenario, however, is that the three main political formations will fight for access to the executive. The current prime minister, Saaeddine Othmani, the Islamist candidate of the Justice and Development Party, who has been in office since 2017, remains in the lead. Behind him are the centre-right Independent National Rally (RAI) and the left-leaning Authenticity and Modernity Party.
The outcome of the elections will a priori be approved by the Council of Europe, as was the case in the last parliamentary elections in 2016. At that time, the Assembly's ad hoc committee set up to observe the electoral process in Morocco concluded that the elections "took place in a calm atmosphere, and voters were able to choose freely from the lists presented by parties with different political sensitivities". The mission also highlighted the professionalism of the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Justice, "which organised the voting with integrity and total transparency".
The report's only criticisms were of Rabat's difficulties in mobilising the electorate, especially the young, and its inability to surpass the records of the first elections held in 2011 after the adoption of the new constitution. The European delegation was also surprised by the large number of damaged ballot papers. For these elections, the most optimistic expect to surpass the 60 per cent voter turnout recorded in the last legislative elections; others, however, expect a new setback due to the lack of political polarisation and the homogeneity of the different electoral programmes.
The Alawi Kingdom has been a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe since 2011, which allows it to participate in the body's activities. Through its links with the ACPE, Morocco is also a full partner of the Venice Commission and the North-South Centre, and has observer status in the European Pharmacopoeia and the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ). Close cooperation was ratified with the opening of the Council of Europe Office in Rabat, operational since 2014. A decade later, the European body will ensure the proper conduct of elections for the third time.
