Moroccan foreign policy and the PJD: A pragmatic party?
CIDOB Fundation organised a debate workshop in which participants debated the singularities of the PJD, a party which has generated important expectations of growth with regard to the September elections in Morocco.
The Mediterranean Programme of the CIDOB Foundation organised a debate workshop in which an analysis was made of the weight of the Justice and Development Party (PJD), a party to which some polls attribute important expectations of growth with respect to the upcoming Moroccan elections in September. The CIDOB Foundation’s Campana Hall hosted an encounter which took as its point of departure a study carried out by Irene Fernández Molina, a doctoral candidate in International Relations at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
El PJD y la política exterior de Marruecos: entre el populismo y el pragmatismo [The PJD and the Foreign Policy of Morocco: Between Populism and Pragmatism] is the provisional title of a study that will soon appear as working document number 7 in the Mediterranean series. In her study, Fernández Molina asserts that “the complex party system in Morocco has been shaken, in the last few years, by the growth of a political force, the PJD, which is often called Islamist, but which, in contrast to the al Adl wal Ihsan movement, has accepted the rules of the game with good doses of pragmatism”. And, despite its good prospects, in the face of the upcoming elections, “the PJD continues to be an opposition party, and therefore it has not been able to carry out governing tasks, much less in the area of foreign policy”, Fernández Molina added. The researcher analysed the peculiarities of the decision-making process in Moroccan foreign policy.
Among them, she highlighted “the power of the King and the little manoeuvring room of the political parties in influencing the country’s foreign policy”. Nevertheless, Fernández Molina underscored the idea that “it is not less certain that some political forces, and, especially, the Justice and Development Party (PJD), have articulated a discourse on the international system and the main lines of Moroccan foreign policy”. Fernández Molina also reminded the audience that the PJD has not stayed out of this sphere. “It has tried to make its positions known abroad, with trips to and constant contact with Spain, France, the United States and Turkey”. The ideas defended by Fernández Molina were analysed in a subsequent debate by Reda Benkhaldun, head of the PJD’s Foreign Relations Commission, Laura Feliu, lecturer in International Relations at the UAB and Miguel Hernando de Larramendi, lecturer at the University of Castillala Mancha. What emerged the most was the desire that the political forces will have the capacity to influence and supervise foreign policy, the role of Moroccans residing abroad, the need to not confuse the criticisms of the PJD with anti-Americanism, harmony between the PJD and the main lines of Moroccan foreign policy such as its economic relations with Europe, the defence of Moroccan ownership of Western Sahara and the importance of maintaining good, neighbourly relations with Spain, especially since 2004.