End of cycle for political Islam in the Maghreb? The formula is starting to flourish in view of the double misfortune suffered this summer by Ennahda, in Tunisia, and by the Justice and Development Party (PJD), in Morocco, two formations from the Islamist matrix which had since integrated 2011, the executives of their country. Bad winds are rising in this segment of the political arena of North Africa after a decade of participation in power.
In Tunisia, President Kaïs Saïed, invoking a “Imminent danger” but not determined, declared the state of emergency on July 25, dismissed Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi and suspended Parliament, de facto ruining the positions of power of Ennahda, the first party in the Assembly, and as such pivot of the government coalition.
In Morocco, the PJD, which held the head of the executive, under the close supervision of the king, suffered for its part a resounding electoral rout in the legislative elections of September 8, its capital of seats in the House of Representatives s’ collapsing from 125 to thirteen. “We suspected that the PJD would lose its” electorate-limestone “but we thought that its” electorate-granite “would resist better”, underlines Moroccan political scientist Mounia Bennani-Chraïbi, professor of political science at the University of Lausanne. However, this was not the case.
We could add to this the disappointment suffered, on June 12, in Algeria, by the Movement of the Society for Peace (MSP), another formation resulting from the movement of the Muslim Brotherhood, and which failed to enter the government, although it came in second in the legislative ballot.
Electorate mistrust
Institutional political Islam, which had distanced itself from revolutionary jihadism in an attempt to integrate itself into the state – through electoral exercise or co-optation by the regime in place – is clearly on the defensive. It has ceased to be the ascending force boosted by the powerful wave of the “Arab Spring” of 2011. It now comes up against a double obstacle: the distrust of the electorate combined with the renewed animosity of the “deep state”. It is the hour of ebb. Is it irreversible?
These three setbacks are of a different nature. In Tunisia, the anti-Ennahda affront in no way derives from the disallowance of the ballot box, as is the case in Morocco, since it stems from an exceptional regime unilaterally decreed by President Kaïs Saïed, which certain constitutionalists have qualified of ” Rebellion “. In Algeria, the Islamists of the MSP are not victims of any eviction since they had already left power on their own in 2012, after having been associated with it continuously since 1996.
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