Morocco's marching season begins.

Morocco's parliamentary race kicked off today with the start of the two-week-long official election campaign period, marked by a flurry of rallies big and small.

In Fez ,we caught up with one small rally, but, as a local policeman commented "These are mainly young men paid to hand out pamphlets. They wouldn't have a political thought in their heads."

A local businessman, who asked not to be named, claimed that poor young men were enlisted to participate and the going rate was one hundred dirhams per day. Marchers who we spoke to denied they were being paid. They also pointed out that they were not representing a political party but were, in fact, urging people to vote.

This may be a difficult task as the scepticism amongst young Moroccans is very strong. Distrust of politicians is widespread and has little to do with political factions. As one disaffected woman said, "They are all liars and promises never become real."


More than 30 parties are expected to take part in the elections, but if the early polls are to be believed, the opposition Justice and Development Party, or PJD, appear to have an early lead. The party, which was formed from various small islamist groups back in 1998, rose to prominence in the last parliamentary elections in 2002, winning 42 seats in the outgoing lower house.

A recent survey by the CSA and LMS polling agencies suggests Justice and Development would take 19 percent of the vote, compared to 15 percent for the establishment Istiqlal, or Independence, party, and 14 percent for the center-left Socialist Union of Popular Forces, or USFP, which together dominate the current governing coalition.

The poll of 1,200 people, which appeared Friday in the Almassae newspaper, had a margin of error between 1.7-2.8 percent.

According to the International Herald Tribune, 69 percent of those surveyed said they planned to vote. However, as we have reported earlier, in the 2002 race, only 50 percent of registered voters cast their ballots and of those, some 17 percent were blank protest votes. The maths is not encouraging.


The IHT states that a dozen observers from the Washington D.C. based National Democratic Institute will be on hand for the upcoming vote.

Morocco's secularist King Mohamed VI, who names the government and still wields ultimate power in the country, has spoken out on the need for electoral transparency and to fight against vote-buying — which overshadowed the 2002 race and has flared up before September's vote.

Over the past few weeks, Moroccan authorities have announced they were bringing charges against dozens of people accused of vote buying and other violations of the electoral code.

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