Justice and Development triples its share of seats in the Moroccan council elections

The Justice and Development Party has tripled its share of seats in the joint elections (municipal and provincial), which took place on Friday. The Party moved from 1,600 seats in 2009 ( last municipal and provincial elections) to 5,021  seats in the 4 September 2015 elections.

The party ranked the first among all parties with more than one and half million voters, ahead by half a million voters more than the second party the Authenticity and Modernity Party. Despite this, the election system does not give the party with higher number of voters the higher number of municipal seats hence the second party got more overall seats in the municipal elections .

Meanwhile ,the  Justice and Development party ranked first in the number of provincial seats by wining 25.7 per cent  of the seats . Next to it is the Authenticity and Modernity party which got 19.5 per cent of the seats and third was the Independence Party which got 17.6% of the seats.

Abd Al-Ilah bin Kiran, Justice and Development Party Secretary General, said in a press conference that “our results are natural. We have been working for more than 20 years. We have steadily accumulated our results. We began from a limited number of elected officers and then Moroccans learned about us and trusted us.”

Bin Kiran went on to say: “The natural thing is for us to advance.” Speaking to the press, he added: “You should put this question to the others (the opposition parties), as to why they achieved such results? Simply, because they were just “singing” against Bin Kiran instead of working.”

Morocco’s interior ministry meanwhile announced that the turnout was 52.36 per cent, which is the exact percentage recorded in the elections of 2009.

Report by Arabi21.