Despite the internal and international crises that harassed Morocco the elections remained a central issue. They figured prominently in the Balafrej government of May, 1958, which the King was reportedly determined to keep in office until elections could be held. But the eagerly sought ``homogeneity'' of the Balafrej Council of Government was never achieved as the Istiqlal quarreled over foreign policy, labor politics and economic development. By December, 1958, when' Abdallah Ibrahim became President of the Council, elections had even greater importance. They were increasingly looked upon as a means of establishing the new rural communes as the focus of a new, constructive national effort. To minimize the chances of repeating the Balafrej debacle the Ibrahim government was formed a titre personnel and a special office was created in the Ministry of the Interior to plan and to conduct the elections. By this time there is little doubt but what election plans were complete. There remained only the delicate task of maneuvering the laws through the labyrinth of Palace politics and making a small number of policy decisions.

From the rather tortuous history of electoral planning in Morocco an important point emerges concerning the first elections in a developing country and evaluating their results. In the new country the electoral process is considered as a means of resolving fundamental, and sometimes bitter, differences among leaders and also as a source of policy guidance. In the absence of a reservoir of political consensus each organized political group hopes that the elections will give them new prominence, but in a system where there is as yet no place for the less prominent. Lacking the respected and effective institutions that consensus helps provide, minority parties, such as the P.D.I. in 1957 and the progressive Istiqlal faction in 1958, clamor for elections when out of power, but are not at all certain they wish to be controlled by popular choice when in power. Those in power tend to procrastinate and even to repudiate the electoral process. The tendency to treat elections as an instrument of self-interest rather than an instrument of national interest had two important effects on electoral planning in Morocco.