An analysis of the election falls naturally in four parts. First is the long and still somewhat obscure process of preparation, planning and discussion. Preparation began slightly more than a year after independence with the first steps to organize rural communes. All political interests supported electoral planning, although there are some signs that the inherent uncertainties of a popular judgment led to some procrastination. The second major aspect of the election is the actual procedure of registration, nomination and voting. Considerable technical skill was used and the administration of the elections was generally above reproach. However, the regionally differentiated results, which appear below in tables, are interesting evidence of the problems of developing self-government under even the most favorable circumstances. A third aspect, and probably the one open to most controversy, is the results of the election. The electoral procedure prevented the ready identification of party affiliation, but all vitally interested parties, including the government itself, were busily engaged in determining the party identifications of all successful candidates the month following the elections. The fourth and concluding point will be to estimate the long-run significance of the elections and how they figure in the current pattern of internal politics.

Elections have figured prominently in nearly every government program and official address since independence. They were stressed in the speeches of Si Mubarak Bekkai when the first Council of Ministers was formed and again when the Istiqlal took a leading role in the second Council. King Muhammad /5, was known to be most sympathetic to the formation of local self-government and made the first firm promise of elections on May Day, 1957. There followed a long and sometimes bitter discussion of the feasibility of elections for the fall of 1957, in which it appears that the Minister of the Interior took the most pessimistic view and that the Istiqlal was something less than enthusiastic. Since the complicated process of establishing new communes and reviewing the rudimentary plan left by the French did not even begin until the fall of 1957, this goal appears somewhat ambitious.