Moroccan Elections: Another Failure of the Muslim Brotherhood
The defeat of the Justice and Development Party in Morocco’s parliamentary elections threatened the future of the Muslim Brotherhood in the North African region.
The collapse of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the Moroccan parliamentary elections was a serious blow to the ambitions of political Islam supporters in the region and around the world.
It was the latest in a series of setbacks for the Muslim Brotherhood (a terrorist organization banned in the Russian Federation), which has been losing ground step by step since the fall of its power in Egypt with the overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi on June 30, 2013. The organization, which has dominated the political scene since the so-called Arab Spring, has failed this time to use the influence it once prided itself on.
A crushing defeat in Morocco
The liberal parties dealt the Islamists a crushing blow in the Moroccan vote. The AKP led the ruling coalition for ten years. Having previously had 125 seats in the legislature, it has now retained only 12. The election results were announced in the evening of September 8 by Interior Minister Abdelouafi Laftit.
The next day, the party’s leadership, including its head and outgoing Prime Minister Saad al-Din al-Osmani, resigned. According to the AKP at a press conference in Rabat, it now intends to return to its “natural” role in the opposition and will hold an emergency congress soon.
The coalition lagged far behind its main rivals, the National Union of Independents (NON) and the Truth and Modernity Movement (PiS), who received 97 and 82 of a possible 395 seats. The center-right Istiklal party also distinguished itself, winning twice as many votes as in the previous election process. The scale of the defeat of moderate Islamists was unexpected. Despite the absence of banned pre-election opinion polls, the media and analysts believed that the AKP would still retain first place.
Coming to power after the 2011 uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, the Moroccan organization had hoped to secure a third term as the ruling coalition. According to some experts, its defeat was contributed to internal political strife following the ouster of former leader Abdelilah Benkirane, who served as prime minister from 2011-2017. The compromise appointment of his successor, Saad al-Din al-Osmani, has significantly weakened the appeal of the Islamist movement in the country.
However, the reasons for the AKP’s defeat lie much deeper. Although the party blamed the new voting system for its poor chances of winning the elections a few days before the elections, it forgot to consider that the failure of its leaders to fulfill promises made in previous election campaigns contributed greatly to its decline in popularity. As a result, during its ten-year rule, the organization lost a significant share of its seats in various regions, including those where it traditionally had power.
Many Moroccans accuse the Justice and Development Party of failing to formulate ideas and programs that could meet people’s demands. Like other Ikhwanist movements in the Arab world, the AKP often relied on simple slogans such as “Islam is the solution!” and the like. In realpolitik, however, their leaders have usually failed to achieve positive change.
The decline of political Islam
Experts claim that Islamist parties have exhausted their moral and religious resources and began to rely on pragmatic and opportunistic methods to maintain domination and control over state institutions. At the same time, voters in several Arab countries, who were initially enthusiastic about the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood, hoping for honesty and justice, gradually lost confidence in the Islamist movement.
For his part, Tunisian researcher and analyst Sami Brahem argues that the collapse of political Islamic movements is the result of their inability “to create programs and develop new visions and perceptions. According to the expert, this failure is doubly dramatic precisely for the Muslim Brotherhood because, first, they held leadership positions in the government, and second, “in their case, to their political failure was also added the loss of moral character, given their experience with corrupt lobbies.
The Moroccan elections are important: they shook one of the last bastions of the Ikhwanist government and demonstrated the weakening of their influence in the region. Experts believe that Islamist parties, such as the AKP in Morocco and Al-Nahda in Tunisia, instead of serving their people, spent time and energy trying to convince the West that they were no longer radicalizing religious groups. Now, these movements have been marginalized in much of the region.
For his part, Tunisian researcher and analyst Sami Brahem argues that the collapse of political Islamic movements is the result of their inability “to create programs and develop new visions and perceptions. According to the expert, this failure is doubly dramatic precisely for the Muslim Brotherhood because, first, they held leadership positions in the government, and second, “in their case, to their political failure was also added the loss of moral character, given their experience with corrupt lobbies.
The Moroccan elections are important: they shook one of the last bastions of the Ikhwanist government and demonstrated the weakening of their influence in the region. Experts believe that Islamist parties, such as the AKP in Morocco and Al-Nahda in Tunisia, instead of serving their people, spent time and energy trying to convince the West that they were no longer radicalizing religious groups. Now these movements have been marginalized in much of the region.
Loss of credibility in Tunisia
The situation with al-Nahda is similar to that of the AKP. The Tunisian Islamist party began to gradually lose popularity after the 2014 parliamentary elections. The 2019 electoral process showed that over a five-year period it lost almost a million of its voters.
Its leaders monopolized power by taking control of successive governments and eventually earned popular dissatisfaction with their actions. Recent polls in Tunisia have shown that Rachid Ghannouchi, the head of the party, while also speaker of parliament, ranked first on the list of the most unpopular political figures in the country. Public resentment over the poor performance of al-Nahda and the failures of the authorities it supported reached its peak on July 25, 2021, National Republic Day, when Tunisians turned out en masse to protest in the streets. The situation in the state prompted President Qais Said to suspend parliament and dismiss the government.
Despite the presence of pragmatic leaders such as Rachid Ghannouchi and Abdelilah Benkiran, the two Islamist parties in Tunisia and Morocco managed to lose credibility and power in a short time. Some experts believe that other Ikhwanist groups, which are more conservative and puritanical, risked the strongest failure.
In Algeria, for example, the Islamist movement is in a state of chaos and division, leading to its marginalization against the background of liberal parties close to the regime. In the absence of ideas and programs, the struggle for leadership among the Ikhwanists themselves in this North African country has become permanent.
Despite this, at the end of the parliamentary elections held in June 2021, the Society for Peace party, ideologically close to the Muslim Brotherhood, came in second place, winning 80 seats in the legislature. Compared to the 2017 election process, this is significant progress for this organization, which has consolidated its position on the Algerian political scene.
The most serious blow
Perhaps the most resounding defeat for the Muslim Brotherhood came in the country where it was born nearly a century ago. Founded in 1928 in Ismailia by a 22-year-old teacher, Hassan al-Banna, the organization began as a purely religious and missionary organization. Its adherents opposed Western influence and promoted the ideas of an Islamic way of development.
Over time, the structure of the movement became more politicized and, for the first time, its activists used violence and terror as a means of pressuring the government. After the assassination attempt on Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1954, the authorities officially banned the Muslim Brotherhood’s activities in the country.
When it resumed activity in the 1970s under Anwar Sadat, the Ikhwanists once again began to propagate anti-government slogans, just as before, resorting to violent methods of struggle. The final politicization of the party and the renunciation of terror occurred only a few years later. Despite a continuing ban by the official authorities, the organization’s socially-oriented aspirations gained wide popularity and support in Egyptian society. In the 2005 parliamentary elections, supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood formed the largest opposition faction, winning about 20% of seats as independents.
During the protests of the “Arab Spring” party members actively participated in the 18-day anti-government demonstrations, which led to the resignation of Hosni Mubarak, for 30 years president of Egypt. Still representing a banned organization in the country, the Ikhwanists skillfully used the events of the January 25 revolution to ramp up their activities.
At the height of their popularity, the Islamists won their first parliamentary elections, and their candidate Mohamed Morsi was elected president of Egypt in 2012. His reign, however, was short-lived. A year later, a wave of protests swept across the country, this time directed against the Muslim Brotherhood itself, which ended with the overthrow of the new head of state in a military coup and his subsequent arrest.
In December 2013, the Egyptian authorities officially declared the organization a terrorist organization. Since then, the government has been able to take appropriate measures against all activists of the movement. Members of the association were forbidden to hold rallies and pickets. Now anyone who participated in the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood, financed it or promoted its ideas were considered criminals and tried under the article on terrorism.
The decision was prompted by the suicide attack on the night of December 24 outside a police office in the city of al-Mansoura, north of Cairo. The attack killed 17 people and injured more than a hundred, including security officers. The organization itself declares its noninvolvement in attacks on military and civilian targets, but the authorities are convinced that the Ikhwanists are responsible for numerous terrorist attacks on the country’s territory.
Although Egypt’s current president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, managed to deal the worst blow to the Muslim Brotherhood movement, some affiliated groups were able to survive the crisis in other Arab states.
Dependence on Foreign Support in Libya
This is what happened in Libya, for example. In August 2021, against the background of events in neighboring states, a local member of parliament Said Amgeib called for using the experience of Egypt and Tunisia and relying on the army to get rid of the influence of the Ikhwanists.
The political wing of the Ikhwanists is represented in Libya by the so-called Justice and Construction Party (JCP), founded in March 2012. Its members have recently taken various measures to reform their organization by changing its name, slogan, appearance, etc. In June 2021, the SAR organized a conference during which a new leadership was elected. The former head of the party, Muhammad Sawan, who was at the very origins of the party in 2012, was replaced by a prominent politician and one of the most dangerous leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, Imad Abdel Latif al-Bannani.
Analysts attribute all the changes within the ranks of the Libyan Ikhwanists, taking place on the eve of the general elections scheduled for December 24, to the inability of the movement to influence decisions in the country and the loss of trust of the people. As in other states, after the events of the Arab Spring, the Justice and Construction Party showed itself quite successfully during the electoral process in 2011, losing, however, during the electoral process in 2014. At that time, the Muslim Brotherhood carried out a coup d’état with the help of the Libya Dawn coalition, which eventually led to a final split in the country.
After the failure of the Islamists in Tunisia, members of the local branch of the terrorist organization fear for their position, so they take various steps to stir up new conflicts and exacerbate the situation. Such attempt, in particular, was the call of the prominent Mufti in exile, al-Sadiq al-Gharyani to overcome internal divisions and start an armed uprising. The Islamic leader stated this in his address to the armed groups of the “Volcano of Wrath” operation, broadcast on Tanasuh TV during his author’s program.
In addition, the cleric recommended that the Tripoli-based Transitional National Unity Government (TNU) strengthen relations with “allies from Turkey and Qatar,” which, according to the Mufti, would help gangs defeat the LNA. The activity of the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood is inextricably linked to Ankara’s support. Although international pressure is growing to remove foreign mercenaries from the country, this did not prevent Abd al-Hamid Dabiba, head of the National Unity Government, from visiting Turkey in early September. This visit demonstrates once again that the current authorities do not prevent the Middle Eastern republic from interfering in Libya’s internal affairs.
It is worth noting that the Supreme State Council (SSC), established under the 2015 Schirat Political Agreement, which is an advisory power institution, is headed by a representative of the SAR, Khaled al-Mishri. Currently, with the Muslim Brotherhood losing popularity among the people, members of the SSC are actively obstructing the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections, as well as calling for a freeze on all military contracts with outside parties to prevent the withdrawal of mercenaries.
Although the Muslim Brotherhood in this North African country has been able to withstand difficulties, it is now dependent on foreign support, which has made it completely subordinate to Turkey. Thus, the local Ikhwanists are not seen as an influential branch of the terrorist organization, and their role does not go beyond providing funding and assistance to their associates in the region.
Turning point
It is likely that the defeat of the Justice and Equality Party in Morocco‘s parliamentary elections will be a turning point for the movement, marking the transition from recovery to decline. The collapse of the AKP is “an earthquake that will break the back of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Islamic world,” according to Amin Sossi Alaoui, a Rabat-based geopolitical expert. Two successive government mandates after the revolutions that swept the Arab world in 2011 allowed the Moroccan voter to appreciate the futility of Ikhwanist populist slogans in all their glory.
Thus, the terrorist movement’s attempts to seize power in the Arab region have suffered one setback after another. The way the Muslim Brotherhood builds its strategy in each state depends on local factors and realities. Approaches to countering political Islam also vary. The Moroccan people in particular have exercised their right to expel the Ikhwanists through the ballot box.