Thirteen Moroccan parties face legal action

Thirteen Moroccan political parties are facing threats of judicial trial and cancellation of government support for not following March's deadline for submitting their financial reports to the government. The Moroccan newspaper ‘al-Ahdath’ said in its Monday issue that the voters might be surprised with the decrease in the number of the competing parties, saying: “Many parties may find themselves compelled not to participate as government support will cease as a penalty for not submitting their financial status reports, or having submitted them without sufficient justifications for all the expenditure.” The newspaper said that the last report of the government revealed that 134 political parties did not take the trouble of revealing their annual accounts statements and that 13 others did not adhere to the deadline. Meanwhile, the prosecution authority ordered a judicial investigation on the issue of a Moroccan website that published a poll on Wednesday. Moroccan law prohibits conducting opinion polls related directly or indirectly to the legislative elections from March 15, 2012 until the end of the voting process.