Will Morocco Form a Liberal Government?

The Moroccan legislative elections held on 23 September 2026 have produced a political landscape that deserves to be examined beyond the simple ranking of parties and the number of seats won by each of them. The Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM) emerged as the largest party, winning 97 of the 395 seats, ahead of the National Rally of Independents (RNI), which won 66 seats, and the Istiqlal Party, which secured 65 seats. The Justice and Development Party (PJD) came fourth with 54 seats.
The result of PAM is particularly significant when compared with the 2021 elections. The party increased its representation from 87 to 97 seats, gaining ten additional seats and becoming the largest party in the House of Representatives. By contrast, RNI declined from 102 seats to 66, losing 36 seats, while Istiqlal fell from 81 to 65, losing 16 seats. Thus, the two parties that joined PAM in the previous governing coalition lost a combined 52 seats, while PAM alone increased its representation by ten seats. These figures, in themselves, reveal a clear redistribution of political weight within the political space previously occupied by the parties of the governing majority.

The Rise of the Liberal and Centrist Bloc
The more significant indication emerges when we broaden the perspective from individual parties to what, for analytical purposes, may be described as the liberal and centrist bloc with an open economic orientation.
PAM, which has been a full member of Liberal International since 2024, won 97 seats, while the Popular Movement won 29, the Constitutional Union 17, and the Democratic and Social Movement 8 seats.
Compared with the 2021 results, when these parties won 87, 28, 18 and 5 seats respectively, their combined representation increased from 138 to 151 seats, a net gain of 13 seats. To varying degrees, these four parties also share political space that is closer to liberalism, centrism and an open economic orientation than that of the left-wing parties.
The elections can therefore be read as conveying a political message rather than merely producing a mathematical distribution of seats. Moroccan voters did not give this bloc an independent majority, but they increased its parliamentary representation while reducing the representation of several other parties significantly.
At the same time, the Justice and Development Party, with its Islamist reference, returned strongly to Parliament, winning 54 seats after securing only 13 in the 2021 elections. The electoral message therefore cannot be reduced to a single direction. The elections simultaneously demonstrated the strengthening of centrist and liberal forces, the strong return of the Islamist opposition, and a clear decline in the position of other forces that had been part of the previous governing arrangement.

Is a Liberal Majority Possible?
From this perspective, the question arising after the elections is: Can a government with a clearly liberal centre emerge, rather than simply another coalition bringing together politically distant parties for numerical reasons?
Numerically, there is a clear possibility of constructing such a coalition. Alongside PAM, the Popular Movement, the Constitutional Union and the Democratic and Social Movement, there is the Istiqlal Party, which won 65 seats.
If Istiqlal were added to this bloc, the total would reach 216 seats, giving it a parliamentary majority above the threshold of 198 seats required out of 395. This majority would not be based on a single dominant party, but on a group of parties with different political and historical backgrounds that could nevertheless find considerable common ground on economic, institutional and development issues.
Istiqlal: A Potential Fourth Partner
It is true that Istiqlal is not a liberal party in the precise international party sense, and that it carries a deeply rooted nationalist and conservative political heritage. Nevertheless, this does not prevent the existence of significant areas of convergence between Istiqlal and centrist and liberal parties, particularly in the economic sphere.
The relevant criterion in discussing a coalition government is not complete ideological uniformity, which is almost impossible in a pluralist system, but the ability to formulate a common government programme based on clear principles concerning growth, investment, private initiative, administrative reform, social justice and the development of public services.
From this particular perspective, Istiqlal could be a natural partner in a broad centrist coalition rather than merely an additional number needed to complete a parliamentary majority. The party has a long political history and a broad social and organisational base. Its presence could also give any new coalition a national and historical dimension that a collection of smaller parties could not easily provide.
Consequently, bringing Istiqlal into a broad coalition could be viewed as an attempt to build what might be described as a new historical bloc, bringing together political forces with different roots around a common reform programme rather than constructing a temporary majority held together solely by parliamentary arithmetic.

Can the National Rally of Independents Return to Government?
By contrast, the return of the National Rally of Independents to the new government appears politically more complicated.
RNI was the leading party in the 2021 elections with 102 seats. In the current elections, it came second with 66 seats, losing 36 seats — the largest numerical loss among the major parties that formed the previous government.
Naturally, in analysing election results, this loss raises a question about the meaning of bringing the same party back to the centre of the governing coalition after voters reduced its representation by such a substantial margin.
This is not a judgement on the party or its performance in the previous government; that is a separate matter. Rather, it concerns a basic principle of parliamentary democracies: a new government should, to a reasonable extent, reflect the direction of the new vote rather than reproduce the political balances that voters went to the polls to modify.
From this perspective, giving RNI a central position in the new government despite its loss of 36 seats may appear less consistent with the electoral message than constructing a coalition based more heavily on parties that improved their positions or maintained their political weight.

Would Bringing in the Left Be a Strategic Mistake?
The same consideration, though to a different degree, applies to the possibility of bringing the Socialist Union of Popular Forces and the Party of Progress and Socialism into the government.
The Socialist Union declined from 34 to 26 seats, while the Party of Progress and Socialism fell from 22 to 19 seats. Together, the two parties therefore lost 11 seats compared with the 2021 elections.
There is nothing inherently illegitimate about any political party participating in government. The question becomes different, however, when the objective is to construct a coalition with a clear political and programmatic identity.
Adding parties rooted in socialist and left-wing traditions to a coalition seeking to present itself as centrist and economically liberal could create greater differences in public policy, particularly on economic policy, investment, the private sector, public expenditure and the role of the state in the economy.
There is also another political dimension that should not be ignored: does it make sense to reward electorally parties whose representation voters have reduced, while excluding parties whose representation they have increased?
This does not mean that an electoral loss should prevent a party from participating in government. Parliamentary systems do not always operate according to a simple winner-versus-loser logic. However, the degree to which a government reflects the overall direction of the election remains an important factor in its political legitimacy and its ability to explain itself to the public.

The Importance of Programmatic Cohesion
More important than parliamentary arithmetic is the question of programmatic cohesion.
The experience of coalition governments in different democracies has demonstrated that securing a parliamentary majority is not, by itself, sufficient to guarantee governmental stability. The greater the differences among coalition partners in their economic and social visions, the higher the cost of internal negotiation, and the greater the risk that the government programme becomes a collection of contradictory compromises rather than a coherent vision for governing the country.
A coalition bringing together PAM, Istiqlal, the Popular Movement, the Constitutional Union and the Democratic and Social Movement would, on paper, possess a different combination: a parliamentary majority of 216 seats, strong representation from historically established parties, a broad political centre, and the possibility of building common ground on economic policy, investment, development, administration and institutional reform.
This does not, of course, mean that these parties are identical in every respect. Rather, the success of such a coalition would depend precisely on its ability to turn its differences into a clear and focused coalition programme.

The Message of the 2026 Elections
Perhaps this is where one of the most important meanings of the 2026 elections lies.
Moroccan voters did not give a single party an absolute mandate, but they significantly rearranged the balance of political forces. PAM became the largest party, the bloc that can be broadly classified within the liberal and centrist space increased its representation by 13 seats, while RNI and Istiqlal together lost 52 seats compared with 2021, and the two main left-wing parties lost a combined 11 seats. At the same time, the Justice and Development Party made a strong comeback.
This is not a result that permits a one-dimensional interpretation, but it certainly carries a political message about the direction of society and its expectations for the next phase.
The real question after the elections is therefore not simply: Who can assemble 198 seats? It is also: Which political configuration can turn a parliamentary majority into a coherent political majority and present a programme that its participating parties can defend before the electorate?
If coalition politics is the art of bringing together the possible, the current election results offer a rare opportunity to construct a broad centrist coalition combining significant electoral strength with historically rooted parties that possess substantial social and political bases.
The greatest challenge for such a project may not be securing a majority, but reaching agreement on a clear programme, defining the government's priorities and distributing responsibilities in a manner that reflects the new political weight of the parties.
A New Political Phase
Ultimately, the election results alone do not provide a definitive answer about the composition of the next government. Government formation is a political and institutional process shaped by negotiations and multiple considerations.
But the figures provide a clear starting point for analysis: Morocco has emerged from the 2026 elections with a Parliament that, in a significant part of its composition, has moved towards the centre and economic liberalism, alongside a strong return of the Islamist opposition and a clear decline in the representation of several components of the previous governing majority.
The question of a “liberal government” in Morocco can therefore be considered a legitimate analytical question, not because it presupposes that this is the outcome that should be reached, but because the election results themselves have opened a realistic possibility for a broad centrist coalition with a liberal foundation — provided that its potential members can agree on a common programme that goes beyond narrow partisan calculations and responds to what can reasonably be understood as the message delivered by Moroccan voters on 23 September 2026.

Adil Abdel Aati
Deputy Secretary-General,
African Democratic Alliance for Freedom and Progress