Reuters

RABAT: Moroccans voted in a parliamentary election Friday that could yield their most representative government ever, after King Mohammad VI ceded some powers to prevent any tumultuous spillover of “Arab Spring” uprisings.
Some 13.6 million Moroccans registered to vote in the North African country’s ninth election since independence from France in 1956. The the final voter turnout stood at 45 percent, the Interior Ministry said.

Voter turnout at the previous polls in 2007 stood at a record low 37 percent of 15.5 million voters registered then by the Interior Ministry. The ministry has not explained the drop in the number of registered voters between 2007 and 2011.

The state-run 2M television channel said some of the highest turnout rates Friday were in the disputed Western Sahara.
In contrast to previous elections, Friday’s vote is a closely run contest between a moderate Islamist party and a new coalition of liberals with close ties to the royal palace.

“We don’t know what to expect. We hope voter turnout will exceed 50 percent and that today we will mark a victory of democracy,” said Abdelilah Benkirane, leader of the Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD), as he voted in Rabat’s middle-class Les Orangers neighborhood.
His rival Salaheddine Mezouar, leading the liberal Alliance for Democracy coalition, also could not make any predictions.

“The feedback is positive so far ... People are going to the polling stations ... I’m confident Moroccans are well aware of the particular meaning of the current context,” he told Reuters after he voted in the upper-class Souissi neighborhood.

Under constitutional reforms backed by King Mohammad earlier this year, the new government that will emerge from the election will have unprecedented powers, though the king retains the final say on the economy, security and religion.
The king will pick the next prime minister from the party that wins the biggest number of seats. But whichever bloc comes first is unlikely to be able to form a government on its own, which makes alliances inevitable.

The shift toward greater democracy could falter if the polls are marred by vote-buying which was common in the past, or if signs crop up afterwards that palace officials are trying to meddle in the new government.
King Mohammad has said he wants “free, fair and competitive” elections. But there are already signs the murky electoral practices of the past are still in play.