Morocco: Experimenting with Elections

Arab and African leaders generally sneer at Hassan II of Morocco because he is a King in an era of crumbled monarchies. Yet such "progressives" as Egypt's Nasser and Ghana's Nkrumah would not dare to let their own people indulge in the measure of press freedom and political democracy that Hassan allowed in last week's national elections.

At stake were 144 seats for a House of Representatives, the first freely elected chamber since Morocco won independence from France seven years ago, and the field was wide open. Hassan's major opposition parties, the nationalist Istiqlal and the leftist National Union of...