Moroccan Diaspora Voting Rights: Advocacy Group Pushes for Electoral Reform

"The voting of Moroccans residing abroad (MREs) is one of the political issues that have long been left on the sidelines of electoral law reforms, even though it is becoming topical again with the approach of each election, whether local or national," explains the "Maan, koulchi moumkine" movement in a statement published on Twitter. It deplores the absence of this issue in the draft laws presented by the government and currently being discussed in Parliament. "While within the Maan movement we hope that the government will formulate proposals that strengthen the political participation of Moroccans residing abroad for the next elections, we were greatly disappointed when the draft organic laws governing the next electoral deadlines were published."

Based on this observation, "Maan, koulchi moumkine" calls for the involvement of MREs in the formulation of national political decisions. They are about 6 million living mainly in Europe, and their "contribution to the national economy is considerable since their money transfers represent 5% of the country’s gross domestic product." The movement then proposes to reform Article 22 of Organic Law 04.21, in order to include the representativeness of MREs. This article specifies that "Moroccans residing abroad (MREs) can run for election at the local and national constituency level."

The main amendments proposed by Maan are: the modification of Article 1 "in order to allocate 10% of the seats assigned to local constituencies in a first step". "The Maan movement therefore proposes to keep the same number of members of the House of Representatives, which means that the number of MRE seats in Morocco will decrease from 30 seats to 365 seats (local and regional lists included)". The movement also proposes the modification of Article 2, "with a view to creating MRE constituencies". Two constituencies will be created. "A first European one, and a second one dedicated to the four continents. The European constituency will be allocated 20 seats (Europe hosting a larger number of Moroccan citizens)," details the movement.

The other proposed modification concerns Article 22. It will be a question of granting MREs the possibility of running in the constituencies allocated to them, in addition to the local and regional constituencies. Maan finally proposes the modification of Article 72 to "facilitate the participation in the vote of MREs, by experimenting with the possibility of voting in the embassies and consulates of the kingdom around the world, as well as the abolition of proxy voting. Electronic voting can also be experimented with with the diaspora, before being generalized to all national electoral deadlines, after evaluation. The adoption of this experimentation will anchor the democratic exercise of the Moroccan model".