With Morocco’s legislative elections just three days away, the Istiqlal Party is running a campaign in Oujda built around a deceptively simple principle: listen first, promise later. In the capital of the Oriental region, party teams have stepped up neighborhood tours and direct meetings rather than trading barbs with rival candidates.
The list’s representative and Istiqlal’s candidates have intensified their presence in residential districts, local markets and the public spaces residents pass through every day. The goal, campaign organizers say, is to gather concerns directly from voters instead of reciting a program from a stage. That restrained, respectful tone, one that avoids confrontation and takes care not to disturb the city’s public spaces, stands out in a campaign season where sharper rhetoric is often the norm.
In practice, this grassroots listening translates into conversations about neighborhood services, market conditions and issues specific to the Oriental region. Candidates say they want everyday complaints to become central themes of the electoral debate, rather than settling for broad, generic pledges.
The on-the-ground push is matched by a deliberate digital strategy. The party is producing visual content tailored to platforms popular with younger voters, aiming to make campaign messaging simpler and more engaging. Moroccans living abroad have not been left out of the conversation: their role in the country’s economic development, and their expectations toward the homeland, are explicitly woven into campaign messaging, a reminder that the diaspora remains a political constituency worth courting even without a direct vote on the ground.
The mobilization effort also draws on the party’s parallel structures, including its youth and women’s wings, as well as its professional networks. Targeted meetings with artisans, shopkeepers and carpenters have given the party a channel to discuss sector-specific economic pressures and collect concrete proposals for improving working conditions.
As several parties compete for attention with high-profile announcements ahead of the vote, Istiqlal appears to be betting on sustained, low-key groundwork instead, a strategy whose payoff is harder to measure in real time, but one that could prove decisive in a local race where trust is typically built one encounter at a time.
