MOROCCAN ELECTIONS: MORE TRANSPARENT BUT A SOUR

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 RABAT 001504

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/17/2017
TAGS: PGOV KDEM PREL MO
SUBJECT: MOROCCAN ELECTIONS: MORE TRANSPARENT BUT A SOUR
AFTERTASTE FROM LOW TURNOUT AND CHARGES OF MALFEASANCE

REF: A. RABAT 1429

B. RABAT 1426

C. RABAT 1408 AND PREVIOUS

Classified by Ambassador Thomas Riley for reasons 1.4 (b) and
(d).

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Summary
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1. (C) As the dust settles after Morocco's 2007
Parliamentary elections, we are hearing increasing
complaints, despite the government's continued openness after
polls hailed internationally for their unprecedented
transparency. Two factors are leaving a sour aftertaste.
First, the low participation rate in the September 7 polls,
officially set at 37 percent, along with an invalid ballot
rate of 19 percent. These are being cited as evidence of
profound public alienation from the political system.
Second, we are hearing multiple complaints alleging numerous,
systemic irregularities. On top of its public charges of
opposition vote buying, a senior PJD leader added privately
to us claims of official misbehavior in the elections.
Meanwhile, the coalition of domestic civil society observers
have released a scathing report - in stark contrast to the
initial findings of the international observer mission and
the Royal Human Rights Council.


2. (C) At the same time, however, the government's truly
unprecedented transparency continues. On September 15, the
government, correcting a shortcoming from the last elections,
released formal detailed vote counts, by district. We have
also heard reports that judicial authorities are
investigating up to 40 newly elected members of parliament
for electoral malfeasance could offset these process
complaints and in the process shake up the political
landscape. Some believe the GOM's electoral transparency
this year will pay off in higher participation rates in the
future. Ultimately, constitutional reform leading to a
stronger parliament will be necessary to build public
confidence in the system. End summary.

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They Threw an Election, but Nobody Came
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3. (C) The Ministry of Interior's downward revision of
participation to 37 percent of registered voters was a
stunning admission by the GOM. The low turnout represented a
significant setback both for the government and for the King
personally, who had regularly and vigorously urged his
subjects to vote. The "silent majority" of Moroccans who
opted not to vote, along with the 19 percent of voters who
turned in invalid ballots (exceeding the percentage who voted
for any single party),have had a more fundamental impact
than those who did vote by calling into question the broader
legitimacy of the system. (Note: Although we don't have a
precise breakdown, some of these rejected voters are the
result of voter error or confusion. However, based on
numerous interviews and discussions, we believe that the vast
majority of these are in fact blank ballots, in some cases
with obscenities penned in, or with the entire ballot "x'ed"
out. End note.)


4. (C) Unlike many other countries with voter turnout issues,
Morocco's absentee voters appear to have been drawn as much
from the middle and upper classes as from the lower classes.
Business contacts in Casablanca told us that they did not
vote in this election and do not plan to vote in the next
because they see no point and have no faith in the process.
The question of how to define transparent elections is also
coming into play. The fact that the Government of Morocco is
widely credited with being neutral in the process may not
indicate transparent elections if indeed other players
subverted the process as as has been claimed.


5. (C) Mohammed Ben Hammou (protect),President of the
Moroccan Center for Strategic Studies, told us the low
turnout, and the elections in general, were bad news for
Morocco. "It has now been clearly demonstrated that the
people are alienated from the political system," he asserted.
Youth in particular, who represent Morocco's future, have no
confidence in Morocco's leaders, he emphasized, warning that
if left unaddressed, this trend would destabilize the country

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within a decade.


6. On Saturday, however, the government, correcting a
shortcoming from the last elections, released detailed formal
vote counts, by district. This was only a day after the
specialized international observation focused on counting,
the Berlin-based DRI, issued a report calling for such
release. The release had to have been planned before, given
its very clear presentation on the Interior Ministry website:
www.elections2007.ma, which we recommend for those interested
in details. The site does not at this time carry votes by
voting precinct, which would be a further and even more
decisive element of transparency.

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Low Turnout: All Fingers Point to the Parties
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7. (C) Interestingly, MOI statistics show that 85 percent of
eligible voters collected their voter registration cards
between their issuance in May and Election Day September 7.
The difference between intent to vote as expressed by the
card retrieval rate and the actual voting rate may be an
indication that the King's and government's participation
campaign was initially successful in peaking interest in the
electoral process. The overwhelming consensus among Embassy
contacts, supported by academic research, is that Morocco's
political parties enjoy very low public confidence. The
parties' inability to present a persuasive, coherent vision
of change and progress may have subsequently led an already
disillusioned electorate to withdraw from further
participation (reftels). Almost all interlocutors have told
us that the burden of moving national political reform
forward in a parliamentary context now falls on the parties.

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Election Day was Clean - but Were the Elections?
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8. (C) In the days following the September 7 polls, there
was general consensus that the GOM's management of the
balloting and counting process was transparent and efficient.
However, the European Union-funded (EU) domestic observer
consortium issued on September 12 a scathing statement that
stood in sharp contrast to the initial findings of the (MEPI
funded) International Observer Mission and the Royal Human
Rights Commission (CCDH) (ref A). The domestic observers
charged that "the integrity of the elections was compromised
by pressure exerted on large sectors of the electorate, in
particular by the illicit use of money, merchandise and
promises." The report went a further step in denunciation by
accusing local government officials of complicity in fraud in
various races around the country, charging that they turned a
blind eye to the use of local public transport vehicles to
move voters en masse, overlooking campaign activity on
election day, discrepancies between voting card issuance and
voter list data, and process violations during the count.


9. (C) Similarly, the Islamist PJD also cried foul after it
fell well short of expectations in the seat count even as it
won the popular vote. "We came in second, corruption came in
first," was the much-circulated sound-byte from deputy party
leader Lahcen Daoudi. Another party spokesman, appearing on
Moroccan TV complained of "negative neutrality" on the part
of the authorities, who were all too willing to overlook
credible allegations of vote buying and suppression in local
races, he charged. In a September 18 meeting, Daoudi told us
that the use of money to buy or suppress votes had been
greater on September 7 than in any previous election. In his
own district, Fes-North, he charged that his chief
competitor, the Istiqlali mayor Hamid Chabat, had deployed
thugs near polling stations to discourage voters with an
Islamist appearance. Daoudi nonetheless won one of the four
seats in the district, but maintained that PJD could have
taken at least one more seat if not for "dirty tricks" from
the competition.


10. (C) Many sources have offered us anecdotes about vote
suppression, which may have exceeded the practice of actual
vote buying, and would also obviously aggravate the low
turnout rate. In various races around the country, contacts
tell us, individual campaigns and local party officials would
"rent" the i.d.'s and voting cards of voters presumed likely
to vote for an opponent. In exchange for a nominal fee of
anywhere between DH 20 and DH 200 (USD 2.40 - USD 20.40),a

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voter would turn over his/her voter card and i.d., for
retrieval after election day. Absent either of these
documents, citizens would not be able to vote, leaving a
majority of "reliable" voters for a given candidate to turn
in their ballots. One factor which may have contributed to
the low turnout rate was the government pressure against vote
buying, on which the Embassy has extensively reported.
Voters whose only reason to go to the polls was the reward at
the end may have been ready to do so, but with no money
decided it wasn't worth the effort.

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The Other Shoe May Still Drop
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11. (C) At least some of those complaining they were cheated
out of their seats by vote buying and other malfeasance may
still be vindicated. The GOM has confirmed that judicial
authorities are investigating 40 elected MPs for electoral
malfeasance. This news carries significant weight in light
of the precedent set by the GOM in September 2006, when 15
elected to the Upper House were removed from their seats for
malfeasance, with 8 sentenced to jail. It is too early to
predict whether the 40 investigations cited by the GOM will
lead to significant turnovers, and new by-elections, but the
potential exists for a further makeover of the parliament's
composition by party.

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Epilogue: A Credibility Lag?
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12. (C) Notwithstanding the low turnout and the charges of
local-level malfeasance, the Government of Morocco (GOM) went
to unprecedented lengths to ensure that information about
voting was available quickly and was widely disseminated.
Preliminary results were announced the evening of September 7
and, as more data became available through counting, the MOI
revised its participation figures from 41 percent to 37
percent (as compared to 52 percent in 2002),showing that it
was willing to impart information that could be seen as
embarrassing to a government and monarchy that staked their
reputations on a high participation.


13. (C) The international observer contingent, and an
apparent majority of Moroccan analysts and political
observers give the government high marks for its election
operation, saying that these were the first "real elections."
Journalist Kamal Mountassir, who was pessimistic about
turnout and vote buying in pre-election conversations, said
on September 14 that the GOM may be a victim of "credibility
lag" in which people are so accustomed to government meddling
and ineptitude that they may not yet be willing to give the
MOI credit for what well this time around. Mountassir said
that it will take at least one and maybe two more elections
before most Moroccans will concede governmental fairness.

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Comment
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14. (C) The lack of popular faith in the parliament, and
political parties' seeming inability to move beyond
self-interest toward a true model of constituent service and
representation (reftels) represent fundamental obstacles to
substantive democratic reform in Morocco. We assess that the
lack of public trust in the parliament is rooted not only in
the political parties' ineptitude but in the public
realization that parliament is a toothless institution,
relegated by the constitution to a marginal and superficial
role in policy making, with the Palace retaining all the
trump cards. Only constitutional reform devolving real
authority from the Palace to the parliament seems to us
likely to change the current equation. So far we are hearing
little from the parties, or in the broader public discourse,
on the subject. End comment.


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RILEY