Morocco

Morocco, in its attempt to surf on the wave of pan-Arab unrest, is holding early elections today. No-one knows what's going to happen.

Image from Casablanca Airport Transport

On paper, the constitution of Morocco looks a lot like Britain in terms of the power held by the monarch. In Britain, however, (like Poland before us) we took the wise step of selecting a king who didn't speak the language and wasn't really into politics. Since then, we've only really had to worry about the Monarchy at Christmas, in the tabloids and at some of the better race meets. In Morocco, however, the character of the country is still very much influenced by the character of the King.

Thus, had the Arab Spring happened under previous king (and world-class tool) Hassan II, it would have been Syria all over again, at best. Instead, it happened under his son Mohammed VI.

King Mohammed came to the throne in 1999 with pretty much unlimited power: there was a parliament, instituted two years earlier, but he picked the Prime Minister, could write and pass laws by decree, and appointed judges, generals and civil servants at his own discretion. Surprisingly, he started giving some of that away almost immediately, significantly beefing up parliament. He also reformed the family code quite extensively, bringing in such cutting-edge reforms as 1) Unmarried women may inherit property 2) Men may not take a second wife without the agreement of the first and 3) women who are subject to domestic abuse may file for divorce.

Depressingly, these moves are described as having been "polarising", with conservatives claiming he'd been "led astray" by "foreign influences". Nonetheless, between that and the moves he's made to open the country to foreign investment and help the poor, the King seems to be pretty popular with the average Moroccan. He's also popular with western leaders, and it's not hard to find pictures of him meeting, shaking hands, shaking hands, shaking hands, cracking jokes and having a rare old time.

Image from the Moroccan American Business Council

So King Mohammed is the face of gently-gently reform in the Arab world. Since this spring, of course, people have somewhat lost patience with gently-gently.

Image from Agadir Vacations

Shortly after Ben-Ali had fled Tunisia and Mubarak had decamped to Sharm-el Sheikh, the King, perhaps realising which way the wind was blowing, went on TV and announced a sweeping constitutional reform. This included separation of powers, recognising minority languages, and basically upgrading the Prime Minister to a full head of state, rather than the King's majordomo. It also required that the PM be a member of Parliament from the largest party, rather than just whoever the King picked. It was also, in a nice touch, a referendum- though as it turns out, he needn't have worried.

There are those who wonder if he wasn't giving the protesters a bit of flannel, or being the good cop to the police's bad cop: that theory is somewhat supported by the fact that the people discussing it got their press credentials revoked.


I'm not going to go into a great deal of detail on the different parties, for a few reasons. For one, there are twenty of them and at the last elections the largest didn't crack 11% of the vote.

That frgamentation might be a consequence of apathy; Moroccans weren't super impressed by the pre-reform Parliament, possibly because all it could really do is advise the King in the "Good idea or great idea?" sense of the word "advise". Consequently, turnout was around 37%.

On the other hand, turnout in the constitional referendum this year was comfortably north of 70%, and there's been quite a rush on new voter registrations since then. What I'm saying is that the 2011 elections are going to be qualitatively different than the 2007elections were, and it's anyone's game. The overwhelming probability is that there'll still be a coalition government of atleast three or four parties, but getting the #1 cup is still a prize worth getting as that party nominates the Prime Minister.

Any step-change in the electorate is going to make an election unpredictable, but that is even more true this time around. Part of the constitional reforms bought in were electoral lists that are reserved exclusively for women, and another exclusively for people under 35. In my opinion, it's a great idea: the Arab Spring has been driven predominantly by the youth, and giving the political parties a big incentive to channel those people into representative democracy seems like a masterstroke to me.

As an aside, I happen to think this would be an alright idea in Britain, too, but there's a key difference between here and there:

Image from Nationmaster

Image from Nationmaster

So, there are twenty parties now and the whole order could be upended today. Nonetheless, here's the overall shape and a few names to look out for in the news.

1) King-and-country conservatives. Major themes include supporting the monarchy (in principle but not so much in the person of reform-minded Mohammed) and taking back those bits of the Morocco that still innacountably think that they're part of Spain. Name to remember: The Istiqlal party, a.k.a. the Independence Party, home of the current Prime Minister.

2) God-and-family conservatives. Name to remember: The Justice and Development party. Yes, that name should be familiar, but be aware that Morocco doesn't have the traditions of Republicanism and secularism that Turkey does.

3) The Left. Shading from unreformed old members of COMINTERN through to people somewhere around the New Labour mark, you can be pretty confident of naming a party in this group if you just name any left-of-centre political party you've ever heard of. Particular examples include Socialist Union Popular Forces, the Democratic and Social Movement, the Labour Party, the Democratic and Social Movement, the Socialist Party, the Unified Socialist Party, the Party of Progress and Socialism, the Democratic Socialist Vanguard, and the People's Front of Judea.

4) Conservative Liberals. To many of you, dear readers, that's going to sound like an oxymoron, but readers in Britain can probably imagine it. We're talking about people who like Enterprise Zones and deregulation, but also wish that men still wore hats in public and smoked pipes after dinner. They're not in favour of Imams writing government policy or sending the marines into Melilla, but they do like the comfort of a nice ordered society. They're not in favour of radical reforms or great causes, but they do concede that things are better now than they were a hundred years ago and support cautious moves to make the nextdecade (slightly) better still. In other words, they are absolutely in harmony with King Mohammed.

Even as the King is slowly giving away his nominal powers, the fact is that Morocco is still a country where connections, money and wasta is the way most things get done. Between that and a divided parliament, no-one expects Mohammed to be anything other than the locus of power in Morocco for the foreseeable future.

The real question to be decided is whether the Moroccan people- and especially the people in the streets- get on board with the elections, and what the shape of the electorate looks like if they do. Ironicaly, a big swing towards Islamists or old-school Nationalists (and against the king) might cause him to buckle down and hold on to what power remains. A big victory for the parties aligned with the King, especially if it's from young voters, will be an endorsement of his schemes for steady drip of reform and could see Mohammed handing his throne to a largely or entirely ceremonialised sucessor.