Outgoing governmental coalition obtains parliamentary majority

The outgoing governmental coalition which won 167 seats out of 295 has already secured majority at the House of Representatives and kept all chances to remain in power.

While the parties of the opposition have lost a great deal in the Friday Poll, the Party of Justice and Development (PJD/moderate Islamist) scored a significant rise totaling 38 seats, pending other results covering seats reserved for women in the future house.

According to the partial results of the polls of September 27 proclaimed by the minister of the interior Sunday evening, the Socialist Union of Popular forces (USFP) comes first with 45 seats and is followed by its main ally in the governmental coalition, the Istiqlal Party (PI) with 43 seats.

The weight of the other members of the outgoing majority, namely the National Rally of Independents (RNI), the National Popular Movement (MNP), the Party for Progress and socialism (PPS), the Front of Democratic Forces (FFD) and the Socialist Democratic Party (PSD), remained practically unchanged, these parties having respectively gleaned 38, 16, 9, 10 and 6 seats, awaiting the proclamation of the other results.

The 12 seats lost by the USFP in this poll (57 in the 1997 poll) and the 8 seats lost by the RNI (46 in 1997) were partly compensated by the improved score of the PI whose seats at the House went up from 32 to 43.

The call launched by the USFP during the electoral campaign urging voters to give it "another chance to successfully carry out the democratic transition" seems to have been heeded.

The stability, not to speak of the increase of the rate of unemployment in rural areas, the hike of prices of consumption goods over the past five years, the freeze of civil service salaries were compensated by the progress in the fields of education, public health and public finance management implemented by the outgoing coalition, observers say.