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Reforms, Power and Politics in Morocco
A decade after he ascended the Alawite throne after the death of his father Hassan II in July 1999, King Mohammed VI has transformed Morocco's political culture, even if constitutional and de facto power is still concentrated in the royal palace.
- PUBLISHED: Tue 5 Jan 2010, 9:24 PM UPDATED: Thu 2 Apr 2015, 10:19 AM
- By:
- Matein Khalid (Geopolitics)
Morocco under King Hassan II was a repressive security state and his 38 year reign is remembered in Morocco as “les annes de plomb”, the years of lead. Hassan II survived two assassination attempts in the 1970's, a rebel attack on his seaside palace and a volley of machine gun fire from an air force escort jet as the royal place entered Moroccan airspace above the Mediterranean coast. Hassan II's regime was a classic “mukhabarat” state run by intelligence agencies whose ultimate powerbroker General Mohammed Oufkir was even implicated in the plots to assassinate Hassan II.
King Mohammed VI engineered a historic policy U-turn soon after he succeeded his father as Morocco's ruler. The new king released hundreds of political prisoners, closed down the notorious secret desert prison Tazmamart (where General Oufkir's widow and children were imprisoned for decades), reformed the Family Code to give greater rights to women despite bitter opposition from clerics and tribal chieftains, eased press censorship laws and dismissed his father's ruthless secret police boss Interior Minister Driss Basri. The new Moroccan king even created a Justice and Reconciliation Commission to investigate human rights abuses during his father's regime, a tribunal whose model was clearly post-apartheid South Africa. The royal palace declared that Morocco would be ruled under a new concept of authority, with respect for human rights, religious tolerance and the empowerment of women. The king of Morocco was soon hailed in Paris, London and Washington as the symbol of a new reformist revolution in the Arab world.
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Yet Morocco's quest to evolve into a liberal parliamentary democracy ended on May 16, 2003, after a terrorist cell slaughtered 53 people in a Casablanca bomb attack. The terrorist attacks shocked Morocco because the suicide bombers were homegrown jihadists from Casablanca's slums. Even though the Alawite sultans and kings of Morocco boast an impeccable religious lineage with the caliph title of “commander of the believers” the regime's new Islamist enemies are Takfiri Salafists who brand all pro-West Muslim regimes as apostates and incite revolts against them. The Takfiri cells in the slums of Rahat, Casablanca, Meknes and Fez reflect the emergence of a violent, pitiless underclass that use religious fanaticism and terrorism to wage war against a society that shuns them. The traditional, communal, moderate Islam of the medina, symbolised by the Adele Fehrsen (justice and charity) political party, has no relationship with the terrorists whose bombs have killed hundreds of innocent people in Casablanca and Madrid, Spain.
The Casablanca terrorist attack forced the Moroccan government to depend on repression and the security services to combat its revolutionary, Islamist opponents. The domestic war on terror, not political liberalisation, defined the state's priorities after May 2003. Morocco boasts a vibrant civil society, but its democratic culture is embryonic. The Moroccan king appoints the Prime Minister, the Cabinet, sets the legislative agenda, commands the armed forces and the intelligence agencies. The Parliament is dominated by royalist parties, such as the Party for Authenticity and Modernity, (PAM) founded by King Mohammed's close friend Fouad El Himma, a former Deputy Interior Minister and staunch monarchist. The Moroccan political elite, known as the Makhzen, is subservient to the royal palace and mostly obsessed with self-enrichment and its own privileges, as in the reign of Hassan II.
While Morocco is a rare model for political reform in a feudal, autocratic and military ruled Arab world, it is nowhere near the sort of constitutional monarchy that Spain evolved into after King Juan Carlos succeeded the dictator Francisco Franco. King Mohammed's commitment to political and economic reform was tempered by the need to protect the regime after the Casablanca terrorist bombings in May 2003 and the carnage caused by Moroccan veterans of the Afghanistan war against the Soviets. The Interior Ministry and the intelligence agency, while not omnipotent as they were under Hassan II, play a critical role in parliamentary politics. “The New Era”, as the first decade of King Mohammed reign is known, has changed the texture and atmospherics of Moroccan politics.
However, Morocco's political parties are still weak, its legislature ineffective, press censorship and judicial manipulation are pervasive, the makhzen elite is uninterested in any change in the balance of power and the security forces still engage in a shadow war with the regime's violent armed opponents. The French proverb “the more thing change, the more they stay the same” defines Moroccan politics in the new era.
Matein Khalid is an investment banker based in Dubai. For comments, write to opinion@khaleejtimes.com