September-October 2011, Pages 34-36

Special Report

The Moroccan Way

By Marvine Howe

The first thing that strikes a frequent visitor to Casablanca, Morocco's economic capital, is that sidewalks, shoulders of boulevards, even some neighborhoods have been occupied by street-vendors with a wide range of business activities, from lingerie and electronic goods to vegetables and snails. As the Casablanca weekly La Vie Eco pointed out, in the past hawkers were mainly country people, fleeing drought and other hardships. Now, however, they are unemployed college graduates, even families, who can make more as marchands ambulants than working for the minimum wage. Also, there's been a change in attitudes. Before there were regular sweeps of the illegal tradesmen and confiscation of their wares. "Since the Arab Spring, they have taken over the streets without fear," La Vie Eco noted, emphasizing that the authorities have shown "unbelievable indulgence" toward the transgressors ever since the Tunisian vender Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire last December, starting the whole Arab democracy movement.

Nor have the lessons of the Arab Spring been lost on Morocco's rebellious youth and the general public, frustrated with omnipresent corruption, high unemployment and abysmal social services. Emulating their Tunisian and Egyptian peers, Moroccan university students and graduates congregated on Facebook and organized their first mass rallies on Feb. 20, which were such a runaway success that the date became the name of the reform movement. Initially, the February 20 Movement attracted broad solidarity with its goals of liberty, justice and human dignity, and stipulation that it was not anti-monarchy. Soon thousands of protesters took to the streets in some 50 cities around the country.

Acutely aware of the Feb. 20 stirrings in the wake of the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, the Moroccan Palace moved swiftly. On March 9, King Mohammed VI, 47, renewed his program for democratic reform, originally proclaimed on his accession to the throne in 1998. Early on, the son of King Hassan II had made important advances in human rights, but other reforms were delayed by security considerations, inertia and special interests. Now, according to the accelerated royal timetable, an independent commission of jurists, academics and human rights experts was to draft constitutional amendments, which would be submitted to the political parties, unions and associations for comment, then put to the public by referendum on July 1.

Rejecting the undemocratic nature of this procedure, the February 20 Movement called for a constituent assembly. Again the young Facebookers took their demands to the streets—but now they were part of a coalition that included three small leftist parties, the Socialist labor federation and youth organization, the main Islamist opposition association, and the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH). Their slogans became more pointed, denouncing not only corruption but members of the government and even members of the king's entourage. People were no longer afraid to speak out: this, too, was a legacy of the Arab Spring.

On June 17, King Mohammed VI presented his draft proposal for "a democratic, constitutional and parliamentary monarchy." It was a skillfully crafted document, sure to please large sectors of the population with its emphasis on democratic rights and freedoms, recognition of the native tongue of the large Amazigh or Berber minority as an official language along with Arabic, and the enhanced powers of parliament and the chief of government. The Moroccan establishment and its press hailed a new democratic era and the foundation of a modern state.

More circumspect, the publisher of the independent weekly Tel Quel, Karim Boukhari, wrote that King Mohammed's text "is definitely better" than his father's 1996 constitution, but emphasized: "We are still very far from the goal of a parliamentary monarchy, and the separation of powers does not exist since the king hasn't given up any of his powers."

In comments on the popular French and Arabic electronic media, critics of the royal project argued that nothing had changed. On its Web site Mamfakinch ("We will not give up"), the February 20 Movement denounced "the profoundly anti-democratic" campaign and called on all Moroccans to boycott the July 1 referendum.

Having accompanied Morocco's long and tortuous trajectory to democracy, I flew to Casablanca the week before the referendum to evaluate the chances of success of what was already described in the Western press as the Moroccan Model and try to determine if this westernmost Arab country could escape the political upheavals that have occurred in much of the region.

The mood of the country was generally calm, with occasional points of effervescence. The day after my arrival in Casablanca, two mass demonstrations failed to disrupt the city's Sunday routine of outings at the beach. Along the central Boulevard Mohammed VI, more than 100,000 members of the Boutchouchiya Islamic order, bussed in for the event, joined labor unions and political parties waving Moroccan flags, pictures of the king and banners that said "Yes" in Arabic. In the outlying poor district of Hay Mohammadi, about 5,000 February 20 protesters, chanting "we will not vote" in Arabic, were attacked by stone-throwing royalist militants, injuring one person, who was taken to the hospital. Another lesson learned from the Arab Spring; both security services and demonstrators had orders to avoid violent confrontation.

I was not surprised that most Moroccans I met during my visit readily expressed intentions to vote yes to the king's constitution. The Palace's propaganda machine had turned the referendum into a vote for the king and stability against chaos. Only one person admitted voting no, a Casablanca businessman and fervent monarchist, afraid the new constitution gave too many prerogatives to political parties. Even old political friends, long committed to the struggle for democracy, generally saw the new charter as an advance, but were concerned about its implementation.

"You know we have been asking for a parliamentary monarchy since 1978—long before the Arab Spring," recalled Abderrahmane Youssoufi, former prime minister and retired leader of the main left-wing party, the Socialist Union of Popular Forces. "This text satisfies 97 percent of our demands and includes the seven points of the USFP memorandum of 2009 asking for constitutional reforms," he said, listing the most important changes: an independent executive whose head of government has real powers, a legislature with expanded powers, guarantees of the independence of judges, recognition of a role for the parliamentary opposition, and the designation of the king as chief of state.

Likewise, Khadija Rouissi, a veteran human rights advocate and now a leader of the royalist Party of Authenticity and Modernity, stressed that the country has made "strategic gains" under the new constitution, namely the recognition of the democratic choice, the equality of men and women, and the outlawing of any form of discrimination. "The king has shown he's reform-minded, but now the political parties have to step up to their responsibilities," Rouissi emphasized. "The February 20 Movement can serve as a watchdog, a constant reminder of our democratic goals."

A keen observer of the political scene, Nadia Salah, managing editor of the Eco-Medias Group, told me, "We're living through a rich and exhilarating experience. Every time I pick up the constitution, I discover something new. The drafting commission went much further than I could imagine, introducing the idea of citizenship, enabling citizens to question the constitutionality of a law, even banning torture and other serious human rights violations." Some contradictions will have to be ironed out, she acknowledged, for example the equality of men and women, which goes against Islamic law.

Asked about the February 20 Movement, Salah said there was no leader because anyone who appeared as a spokesperson was promptly excluded. However, she arranged for me to meet a group of activists at her office. Six representatives of the Movement showed up; all claimed to be politically independent, but appeared deeply divided. Abdelatif, a 40-year-old accountant, said they were inspired by Tunisia but stressed that the situation in Morocco was different because there was more freedom here. "We want change with the king, not against him," he declared. He and three colleagues announced they were campaigning in favor of the king's constitution, and accused the Movement's leftist and Islamist allies of seeking to manipulate the inexperienced young people.

On the other hand, Hassan, a 27-year-old director of an audio-visual firm, contended that the Movement shouldn't tell people how to vote. "We have other demands: the release of political prisoners, trial of embezzlers, fight against unemployment, free health care and increase in the minimum wage," he stressed. From Rabat, Tahani, a 20-year-old student at the National School of Applied Sciences, staunchly denied that the Movement was controlled by its partners. Disagreeing with her Casablanca elders, Tahani asserted: "All the sections of the movement all over the country decided to boycott the referendum because the process is not democratic and because our number one demand was the separation of powers, which did not happen. All of the institutions are presided over by the king."

On the eve of the referendum, I went to Rabat, where the February 20 Movement had called for another demonstration. I met Tahani at the AMDH headquarters, and we walked to the rally nearby. Some 500 young activists, demanding "boycott" and "peace," were being harassed by nearly as many angry red-shirted zealots, brandishing flags and portraits of the king. "Each time we hold a demonstration, the baltagis, or militia, try to break it up with a counter-demonstration," Tahani explained. Separating the two camps was a cordon of riot police, who did not intervene when the redshirts moved into the protesters' territory, bearing a white coffin inscribed with the words "burial of February 20," which they later burned. Nor did the police prevent the baltagis from laying siege to the demonstrators and holding them hostage for an hour.

Although I had to leave, the events that ensued are described in an open letter to the minister of interior by AMDH vice president Abdelhamid Amine. He recounts that when the police finally opened a narrow breech in the siege for demonstrators to escape, he was attacked by several baltagis, calling him traitor, spitting in his face, kicking him and "trying to force me to say long live the king." At that point, the police offered Amine the protection of their car, but he refused. Two other leaders of the human rights association were beaten by militias with electric clubs and had to be taken to the emergency ward. "Isn't it paradoxical that all this happened on the eve of a referendum on an amended constitution with numerous clauses on the respect for human rights...?" Amine concluded.

After the emotional campaign, the referendum passed smoothly. Everything appeared normal at the Rabat polling stations, with a respectable turnout but no long lines, and nationally no incidents were reported. The shock came the following day with the official results: 98.5 percent voted yes, with 73.5 percent participation—statistics worthy of the old Soviet Union or Ben Ali's Tunisia, remarked a member of the February 20 coalition. A lesser victory would have been more credible. "All fears of contagion from the 'Arab Spring' seem to have been warded off," declared a headline in the establishment weekly Maroc Hebdo International. As it turned out, however, it was premature to talk of a Moroccan Model. That Sunday, thousands of demonstrators turned out in Rabat and Casablanca to call for real reforms and vowed to continue their struggle until their demands were satisfied. There were angry counter-demonstrators as well.

Clearly King Mohammed has bought time with his new constitution, but he will have to produce concrete changes soon. The Palace and political parties will face their first opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to democracy in the fall, when national elections are to be held for a new parliament with reinforced powers under the new constitution. It was also evident that the authorities should rein in the baltagis, whose ugly shenanigans are counter-productive, dangerous and unnecessary. Moroccans may be divided on their goals, but they have demonstrated that they don't want the bloody revolutions taking place in Libya and Syria and threatening other Arab countries.

Marvine Howe, a former New York Times bureau chief, is the author of Morocco: The Islamist Awakening and Other Challenges (available from the AET Book Club). Her new book, Al Andalus Rediscovered: Iberia's New Muslims, is due out later this year.