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Following them, Spain held Morocco till the end of the nineteenth century from whom the French captured it. In 1912, through the Treaty of Fez, the Sultan was deposed and the country came under the control of the French Resident General. The royal family backed an independence movement in the country. However, Morocco could attain independence only after the World War II. Sultan Mohammad V was the first one to ascend the throne after independence who was followed by his son Hassan II. Until 1999, Hassan had a firm grasp of the nation combining repression and concession strategies. Right from the beginning of Hassan’s rule, both Socialists and Islamites hosted a dislike for his rule due to his autocratic nature and his alignment of Morocco with the west.
The developments during 1990s were highly significant in the history of Morocco. The Islamites rose to prominence and a new constitution emerged. The legislative elections were conducted with several national polls. However, the results of the elections were inconclusive as the poll favored all the five major parties more or less evenly. Consequently, Hassan decided to appoint an un-political government of technocrats and independents to manage the scene. Apart from this, Hassan kept firm control of the executive by taking the key decisions by himself and with the help of inner cabinet ministers. In 1996, Morocco signed the Partnership of Euro-Mediterranean with European Union giving way to a free trade between Morocco and the European Union. In the 1997 elections, the socialist party emerged the biggest by winning 14% of the seats. In 1998, Morocco could form a government with opposition politicians. This event was viewed as the fruit of a long process of the growth of democracy in the country.
In 1999, King Hassan died leaving the throne to his son Mohammed VI who continued with his father’s style of administration. Meanwhile, though it repeated the previous results, the elections of 2002 were significant in a way that it gave way to 22 parties to enter the new assembly. Of these parties, the prominent ones were the center-right nationalist Istiqlal, the Union Socialistes des Forces Populaires, and the Islamic Parti de la Justice et du Développement. The socialist Driss Jettou, declared his cabinet in November 2002 exclusively with the members of his own party and Istiqlal, excluding any Islamists from it. Despite several inconsistencies over its long history, Morocco could demonstrate a clear progression towards a successful democracy.
Morocco’s policies remain characteristic of pro-western because of its close ties with US and the European Union. The Spanish-occupied enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, on Morocco’s Mediterranean coast remain to be the outstanding concerns of Morocco’s territorial dispute. Yet another dispute remains to be the one with the indigenous guerrilla movement, the Polisario Front with respect to the issue of Sahrawi, previously known as Spanish Sahara.
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