WHERE THE POPE HAMMERS THE THESES:

The king still runs the show: Whoever wins the coming election, ultimate power will not be shifting soon (The Economist, 9/06/07)

By the reckoning of one prominent Moroccan analyst, all the kingdom's elected institutions together represent a mere fifth of actual decision-making clout. The new rules by which this parliament is being elected may even dilute this role a bit. They divide the country into 95 districts, allotting an average of three deputies to each. By a party-list system with proportional representation that works at district level, the best-scoring party wins a seat for the first candidate on its list. But to take a second seat, it must have won at least twice as many votes as any other party.

With four large parties fielding candidates nationwide and dozens more parties mustering local lists, no single party stands a chance of gaining anything close to a parliamentary majority. The outcome, then, will be a coalition government, whose members will look to the king as their patron and arbiter.

This is a game which all the parties have agreed to, for different reasons. For small, upstart parties, it offers a way of getting a foot in the door. For the established secular parties of left, right and centre, which have seen their appeal wane after serving too long and delivering too little, the system promises to slow their decline.

The system suits the main challenger, too. The Party of Justice and Development (PJD), Morocco's main legal Islamist group, has moved from strength to strength since its creation ten years ago. It held 45 seats in the outgoing parliament, even though it had succumbed to royal pressure and did not contest many districts in the last general election, in 2002. This time it is fielding many more candidates.

In a different electoral system, it could conceivably win outright. But its leaders, who claim to regard Turkey's mildly Islamist ruling party (with the same name) as a model rather than more radical Islamist groups, such as Hamas, do not seem to mind the institutional restraints. Proving its loyalty to the throne has helped the PJD avoid the fate of its more extreme rival, the longer established Adl wal Ihsan (Justice and Welfare) Party, which is formally banned for its refusal to accept the king as Commander of the Faithful. Besides, the PJD has profited precisely from being an opposition party, capitalising on the perceived failure of secularists to deliver the kind of change many Moroccans yearn for.

Turkey was, likewise, Reformed from the top down so that it can now be well-governed from the bottom up.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 6, 2007 5:53 PM