On the eve of Morocco's September 7 parliamentary elections, Party of Justice and Development (PJD) chairman Saad Eddine El-Othmani has said that he was expecting his party to be victorious but that it had not yet been decided whether it would join a coalition.

He also presented the party's three main aims: public service reform, an independent judiciary, and education reform.

With regard to the section of the PJD platform under which Morocco's laws would not be able to contradict shari'a, he said that this was natural in an Islamic country, and that there had been examples of this in the past. He added that the PJD did not aspire to establish an Islamic state, since Morocco already was one.

On the bareheaded women among the PJD candidates, El-Othmani said that this was nothing new, and that they were members of the party like any other member.

Source: Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, London, September 6, 2007