Islamic Party Confident in Morocco

Othmani's party won 42 of Parliament's 325 seats in 2002 elections, making it the third-largest group in the legislature. Supporters and detractors alike acknowledge that it could have won more seats that year if it had tried. But leaders said they feared that an Islamic party victory so soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States would bring a backlash and only fielded candidates in slightly more than half of Morocco's electoral districts.

After that election, King Mohammed VI refused to offer the post of prime minister to any of the winning parties, instead choosing an independent technocrat. And some members of his government called for the Islamic party to be banned after the 2003 bombings in Casablanca.

Othmani projects that his party will win 70 seats in Friday's vote. Although polling here is not generally scientifically rigorous, a 2006 survey by the U.S.-based International Republican Institute showed 47 percent of Moroccans backing the Justice and Development Party.

More than 30 parties are competing Friday under an electoral system that makes it virtually impossible for any one of them to win an absolute majority in Parliament.

Parliament, in any case, has only a limited say in the king's running of the country. Many Moroccans have grown cynical, believing that politicians seek office merely for financial gain. Only about half of the country's eligible voters bothered to cast ballots in the 2002 elections, and the poor are among the most disenfranchised.

"I'm not voting for them. I just wanted the money," one young man said Thursday in Casablanca's Carriere Thomas neighborhood, explaining why he was wearing one party's new T-shirt while canvassing fellow residents.

Carriere Thomas is a warren of huts built out of rocks, with more rocks holding down roofs made from scraps of tin. Mosques have been built the same way, distinguished only by loudspeakers propped on the tin roofs to blare prayers. On Thursday, residents clustered around a communal well where women washed clothes, families drew drinking water in bins and a horse drank.

The district was the home of the extremists behind the 2003 bombings. The king toured the district afterward and promised to raze the shacks and build decent housing.

Now, some of the stone and tin huts lie empty, their occupants having moved elsewhere with government help. New apartment buildings rise among the hovels, but residents complain that rich outsiders have taken control of them, renting the rooms for profit.

It was clear enough why the bombers came from Carriere Thomas, young men of the neighborhood said.

"No jobs, no work. That's why we're doing it," said one man in his 20s. He laughed when asked which party he'd be voting for. "No parties! No one!" And he disappeared into the crowd.