Solana Pyne

Solana Pyne covers Morocco for GlobalPost as a multimedia and print reporter based in Rabat.

A journalist in print and video since 2001, Pyne most recently worked as the associate producer...

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Solana Pyne's Notebook:

June 15, 2009 08:44 ET | Updated: July 10, 2009 09:12 ET

Morocco election surprises

The longer you stay in Morocco, the less you feel like you understand. That’s something I’ve heard a lot from foreign observers who’ve been here longer than I have. It’s a country with many centers of political power, with a fluid political system that awards seats proportionately — virtually ensuring no party wins a majority.

The results of Friday’s local elections seem to be a good example of that fluidity. A party that’s existed for less than a year — the Party of Authenticity and Modernity — won the most votes and the largest block of seats nationwide, 21.7 percent. Similar to municipal governments in the United States, town and village councils oversee local development. But they also elect a majority of representatives in the upper house of parliament. One outcome that was not a surprise: women took more than 3,400 local seats nationwide, thanks to a law that guarantees them a minimum of 12 percent of total slots. In the last round of elections in 2003, before the quota, just 127 women were elected.

Some attribute the new party’s success to its close alliance with the king, who holds the levers of power here. PAM founder Fouad Ali el Himma is a friend of King Mohammad VI. The new party also received a boost when many candidates with established reputations switched their alliance to PAM from other parties.

Despite its royal connections, PAM has sought to position itself as a political outsider. Some two weeks before the election, as the short campaign period began, PAM withdrew from the governing coalition, costing the government its parliamentary majority.

And then in another strange twist, the king stepped in and publicly voiced his support for the very minority government the PAM had just departed.

In a country where voters routinely voice disgust with politics, outsider status may be an asset. It may be one factor that helped PAM prevail over the other major opposition party, the Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD).

The PJD became the second largest force in parliament after the '07 vote, but came in sixth in Friday's local elections, winning 5.5 percent of seats. They fielded fewer candidates, to be sure, but PJD representatives have also accused rivals of widespread vote-buying.

State media, on the other hand, claimed international observers had pronounced election conditions as “ideal.”

Regardless of the vote's outcome, regardless of its maddening complexity, observers I spoke were uniform in one aspect of their praise. Here in an Arab nation, we just witnessed competitive, democratic elections that touched off debates, rather than riots. 

June 4, 2009 07:53 ET | Updated: June 4, 2009 14:36 ET

Obama's speech: The view from Rabat

When Anouar Mehdaoui and two friends stopped for a brief snack at one of many French-style street cafes that dot Morocco's capital city, they had no idea President Barack Obama was giving a speech addressing the Muslim world.

“We didn’t even know he was in Egypt,” Mehdaoui said.

The 31-year-old rental car agency manager and two female friends, a translator and a Moroccan emigre to Spain on a visit home, sipped coffee among a sparse crowd of students, retirees and workers taking a late-morning break in a cafe where the speech played live. And like most other patrons, they glanced at the large flat-screen television on the wall only occasionally, during lulls in conversation.

Like the rest of the trio, Samar Souehqate, 33, praised the president while criticizing American policy in Israel and Palestine.

“I think he’s a good man. He’s a good man,” Souehqate said. “He’s peaceful. He seeks peace.” But she disapproved of America’s support of Israel, adding, “I prefer the American people to American politics. I’m opposed to the politics.”

A recent Zogby poll of seven Muslim countries found that 76 percent of Moroccans — more than any other country surveyed — cite Iraq or the Arab-Israeli conflict as the issue most central to their opinion of the administration’s policy in the region.

That’s true for El Hassania El Abrichi, 42, an insurance agent who’s between jobs. She listened to the speech while smoking Marlboro cigarettes and doing a crossword puzzle.

“I think, relatively speaking, Obama is better than Bush. He seeks peace. He’s good for peace,” she said. But, she said, “Obama is afraid of opposing the politics of Israel.”

Listening from outside, Allal Jharrbaoui, 68, a retired soldier, had a more optimistic perspective, "I’m happy with his speech. He wants to make peace with Arabs, peace with the world in general.”

The most intent listener in the cafe audience was not Moroccan. Graduate student Ahmed Said Alagha, 26, moved from Gaza to study in Rabat. He also praised Obama as a man of peace, and praised his position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“There’s something different about Barack Obama. In his first months as president, he’s talking about Israel and Palestine. Before, American presidents start their terms by talking about the situation inside of the U.S.,” Alagha said.

But, he added, words are not actions.