Morocco’s parliamentary left came out of Wednesday’s election a little differently shaped, with the Left Alliance picking up eight seats while the USFP and PPS—its much bigger and older competitors on the same side of the political spectrum—both lost ground.
The alliance bringing together the Democratic Left Federation (FGD) and Unified Socialist Party (PSU) will send Nabila Mounib, Omar Mahmoud Benjelloun, Mustapha Adainen, Souad Frikech, Mounia Rachachi, Sanae Fawzi, Rachid Michich and Nabila Jalal to the House of Representatives.
Eight MPs hardly make a parliamentary heavyweight. In a House where PAM has 97 seats, RNI 66, Istiqlal 65 and PJD 54, the alliance remains well down the pecking order. For a political current accustomed to a much thinner presence in Parliament, however, Wednesday gave it considerably more to work with.
The alliance made those gains on a night when the more established left did not. USFP, which had 34 MPs in 2021, returned with 26. PPS slipped from 22 to 19. Between them, the two parties shed 11 seats.
That leaves an unusual balance on the left benches: USFP and PPS are still comfortably larger, but it is the FGD-PSU alliance that comes out of the election with the wind in its sails.
Some of its wins came from hard-fought urban contests.
In Casablanca-Anfa, Mounib took 22.88pc of the vote to return to Parliament, finishing behind PJD’s Abdessamad Haïker and PAM’s Najwa Koukouss but ahead of RNI candidate Mohamed Chebbak.
Omar Mahmoud Benjelloun also won a seat for the alliance in Rabat-Ocean, another constituency crowded with candidates from larger parties.
The alliance had gone into the campaign with backing from a number of intellectuals, artists and researchers who publicly called for a vote in its favor. Its supporters cast the ticket as a home for voters looking for a left-wing alternative outside the better-established USFP and PPS.
