Women protest on the streets of Rabat to demand equal rights. Credit: Abderrahim El Ouali/IPS.

By Abderrahim El Ouali
CASABLANCA, Apr 29 2014 (IPS)

Morocco stands divided over a proposal for equal inheritance rights for men and women: modernists see this as application of equality arising from the new constitution, and Islamists see in this a violation of Sharia law.

There have been calls from extremists to kill those who seek equality rights.The trial is over, but the debate on equal sharing of inheritance between women and men is only beginning.

The penal court of Casablanca sentenced Islamist Sheikh Abou Naim to a month of deferred imprisonment and a 500-dirham fine (50 euros) in February for issuing a fatwa to kill Driss Lachgar, general secretary of the Socialist Union of the Popular Forces (USFP), and other leftist activists.

Lachgar had chaired a meeting of party women on Dec. 20 where he called for a revision of inheritance laws so as to establish equality between men and women.

Sheikh Abou Naim accused Lachgar in a video posted on YouTube of “godlessness” and “apostasy”, and made a public call to kill him. The Sheikh called women from the USFP “whores”.

Activists say the sentence passed by the court was overly lenient. Salah El Wadie, leader of the movement Damir (Consciousness), said Abou Naim was sentenced for defamation and not for incitement to murder.

Modernist writer Ahmed Assid, described as a “pig” in Abou Naim’s video, told media the trial had been “a farce”.

The trial is over, but the debate on equal sharing of inheritance between women and men is only beginning.

Fatima Ait Ouassi, member of the ‘February 20^th’ movement to campaign for equal rights, tells IPS that “equal sharing of inheritance between men and women is now a necessity.”

The February 20^th movement arose in 2011 within the Arab Spring. It campaigned successfully to bring in a new constitution approved by referendum in July of the same year. This new constitution stipulates equal sharing between men and women.

However, the Islamist cabinet that was formed after the general election in November 2011 included only two women. A reshuffle in October 2013 included six women among 39 ministers.

Morocco is still far from gender equality in the political world, but nothing stops the government implementing the constitution in inheritance rights, says Ait Ouassi.

“We do not live any more in the old Arabic society where Islam appeared and where women lived under the supervision of men,” she tells IPS. “Now, women work and contribute fully to family assets just like men, and it is inconceivable to apply inequitable laws when it comes to sharing family inheritance.”

Lachgar says 19.3 percent of Moroccan women in cities and 12.3 percent in villages have prime responsibility in taking care of their families.

Strict application of Muslim law grants to a woman only half of what a man inherits in case of the death of one of the parents. In a case of death of the husband, the wife has only one-eighth of the inheritance “while women work even more than the men,” Samir El Harrouf, a member of the United Socialist Party (PSU), tells IPS.

The religious conservatives see this as a literal application of “divine law”.

“Nobody can modify the sacred texts in relation to inheritance and polygamy,” well-known advocate of Muslim jurisprudence Redouane Benchekroune told journalists.

But there are other interpretations of the religious text. “According to the studies that I have made in Muslim jurisprudence, this is simply a false interpretation of texts,” El Harrouf tells IPS.

He says that what the Quran grants to women in inheritance is only the minimum that must be respected – nothing forbids that women be granted more. New studies in jurisprudence show that it is necessary “to distinguish in religious texts between what is constant and what is varying,” El Harrouf says.

“What is constant is matters of faith and worship. On the other hand, other requirements vary according to the social and historical context, and depend on the specific conditions of every society and on a particular phase of its historical development.”

Ait Ouassi agrees. “As we were able to amend the family code, we have to revise the laws on inheritance which are contradictory to international agreements on human rights. We must stop immediately all forms of discrimination against women.”

Morocco ratified the agreement on elimination of discrimination against women on Jun. 21, 1993. A new family code providing for equality came into law in 2005.

According to the new family code, polygamy is forbidden except on authorisation by a court of competence.

Under this family code, polygamy requires the consent of the first wife and authorisation by a judge. But people manage to bypass the law by getting married without official papers. Once the new woman is pregnant, the court is forced to ratify the marriage because the civil rights of the child come into play.

Modernists are therefore asking for outright outlawing of polygamy.

The Islamists who now lead the government, and who were then in the opposition, had opposed the new law and called it “an incitement to prostitution.”

In the current debate, Islamists too are divided. The Justice and Development Party (PJD) which leads the government, calls the push to equality foreign pressure to alter “the identity of the nation”. On the other hand, Mostafa El Moutassim, leader of the Islamist party Civilisational Alternative, published an article on his Facebook page saying he is willing to open up the question of revision of laws governing the distribution of inheritance.

The Moroccan government’s announcement that it would issue new public media guidelines at the end of May has reignited a stormy debate around independent media in the kingdom.

The debate began nearly two months ago when the Islamist government, led by Abdelilah Benkirane, forced public television channels and radio stations to broadcast the five daily calls to prayer, which put many citizens on the defensive against what they saw as a deliberate attempt to Islamise an otherwise moderate sector of society.

The new law was supposedly imposed in an effort to decrease the prevalence of the French language in favour of Arabic, though experts and activists were quick to point out that the government did not pay nearly as much attention to broadcasting Amazigh, the original language of the country, over the airwaves.

For years, the 6th public television channel, as well as the public radio station ‘Mohammed VI for Saint Koran’, have been completely dedicated to religious issues 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Following his ascension to the throne in 1999, King Mohamed VI jumped headlong into this debate by announcing his “project of the modernist and democratic society”, supposedly aimed at curbing the presence of extremist Islam in the public realm.

The King, who approved a new constitution on July 1 last year that grants the monarch substantial powers of arbitration, has come under fire for dishing out an inadequate response to the complicated debate.

Last month, his new head of government, Abdelilah Benkirane of the Justice and Development Party (PJD), declared that the old, ‘Islamised’ guidelines were not set in stone and could consequently be amended.

The controversial law was scrapped, sparking scattered debate around the complicated issue of media in Morocco.

‘Islamisation’ a hurdle to democracy?

Fayçal Laâraichi, director of the country’s national broadcasting corporation, SNRT, told the daily ‘Al Ahdath Al Maghribia’ newspaper last month, “The independence of the public media is sacred.”

Laâraichi warned that the new manuals have to respect “openness, pluralism, linguistic diversity and the national identity”, all enshrined in the country’s constitution.

But his reaction has been criticised as having its own agenda.

“There are (some professionals) who stereotype Islamists as a threat to openness and modernity,” Ismail Azzam, a columnist for the local Hespress magazine, told IPS.

Moulay Touhami Bahtat, editor-in-chief of the local ‘Assdae’ (‘Echoes’) publication, believes, “Saying that the Islamists use the public media to Islamise (our) society reveals a blatant ignorance of the (situation).”

According to him, “The reality is that the public media was always an island completely separated from its environment, whose (practitioners) continue to act as if satellite dishes do not exist.”

Citizens have long lamented the poor quality of programmes on public TV, while management of the public media has been under close scrutiny since “official reports from the Supreme Court indicated very grave financial gaps (in the media’s accounts). The people in charge of the public media not only have to leave, but must be judged” on the issue of corruption, Azzam said.

The real fight, according to him, is not between Islamists and modernists, but between good governance and mismanagement. “Even if there were a leftist government, the opponents of the reform would have accused it of secularising the public media,” he explained.

Abdessalam Benaissa, a prominent writer, commented in Hespress last month, “the suspension of the manuals (by Benkirane) without so much as informing citizens means that the first experience within the framework of the new constitution, namely the right of citizens to information, has just been violated.”

He is not alone in this critique. “The intervention of the palace in the affair of the media manuals was expected because we are not still at the stage of a parliamentary monarchy,” Azzam commented, referring to the core demand of the February 20^th movement, for a separation of powers between the monarch and the government.

Benkirane, who was then the leader of the Islamist opposition, opposed the movement and stubbornly defended executive powers for the monarch.

“The head of the government shows courage only against unemployed graduates,” commented Azzam ironically, hinting at the violent police interventions against demonstrations by unemployed youth.

According to him, Benkirane benefits greatly from the current political order, in which the monarch retains several executive powers and Benkirane himself has a great deal of authority.

A governmental committee, chaired by the minister of housing and former minister of communications, Mohammed Nabil Benabdellah, is now in charge of establishing new media guidelines, which will be released no later than the end of this month.

The government is bound by law to establish media guidelines and submit them to the High Authority of Communications and the Audiovisual sector (HACA), which ratifies the new rules before making them public on an official bulletin board.

Though the new guidelines have already been ratified, Fatiha Aarour, a HACA representative, told IPS, “Professional secrecy forbids us from speaking to the press about this issue.”

(END)

The widespread practice of marrying minors continues to be one of the most incendiary legal and political issues in Morocco today, causing open confrontations between hard-line Islamists and moderates throughout the country.

Speaking on national television last month, Mohammed Abdenabawi, an official of the Ministry of Justice, declared that 30,000 minor girls are married every year – roughly 10 percent of the 300,000 marriages recorded every year in this country of 32 million inhabitants.

The phenomenon is widespread, the consequences for young women and girls severe, and the efforts of civil society sustained, though maintaining momentum against a tide of cultural and religious conservatism is challenging.

A campaign to gather one million signatures to forbid the marriage of minors is already in progress, sparked by the death of Amina Filali, a 15-year-old girl who committed suicide after being forced to marry her rapist.

Supposedly to protect family and female “honour”, a court evoked legislation in the penal and family codes to force Filali to marry the man 10 years older than she who forced her, at knifepoint, to submit to him.

Both the court case and Filali’s suicide opened the floodgates to a deluge of public debate and activism around the issue, which had hitherto been a taboo topic in traditional Moroccan society.

Jamal Rhmani, a member of the opposition Socialist Union for Popular Forces and former Minister of Employment, told IPS, “The campaign has gathered more than 780,000 signatures up to now.”

Despite being a member of the political opposition and one of the lead organisers of the campaign to ban marriage of minors, Rhmani sees his involvement in activism first and foremost from his perspective as the father of a 14-year-old daughter.

“Before being a politician, I am a father. We cannot be indifferent to what is happening around us,” he explained.

Activists, rights groups and members of the opposition have been clamouring for the abolition of article 475 of the penal code, which allows rapists to get off scotfree if they agree to marry their victims; as well as articles 20 and 21 of the family code, which allows the marriage of minor girls.

But the root of the problem runs deep, and will require more systemic change than the abolition of one or two laws

“The culprit is archaic jurisprudence implemented by ignoramuses,” Chakib Khettou, a citizen of Casablanca, told IPS, referring to the Muslim law allowing the marriage of girls older than nine years, according to traditional law.

Back in 2008, Sheik Mohamed El Maghrawi, a well-known Moroccan Muslim scholar, published a Fatwa reiterating families’ right to marry off their daughters over the age of nine. His position provoked a major scandal but the scholar suffered no consequences.

During a press conference in the city of Marrakesh last April, El Maghrawi even expressed his attachment to his position, “based on the Quran and the words of the Prophet ” according to him.

However, opposition to this particular reading of Sharia’a law has become widespread.

Ahmed Faridi, a teacher who holds a licence degree in Sharia’a law, told to IPS, “Nothing in the Quran allows marrying a nine-year-old girl,” he explained. Even if it turns out that the Prophet of Islam himself had married a minor girl, “he is in that case an exception and cannot be a rule,” Faridi stressed.

Traditionalists won’t let go

Minister of Justice and Liberties, Mustapha Erramid, is not as moderate as some of the activists pushing for the marriage ban.

In a national televised address last March, the Minister said, “The marriage of minor girls is not forbidden by the law.”

A lawyer by trade, Erramid is “tolerant” towards the amendment of article 475 of the penal code, but refused to speak about the amendment of articles 20 and 21 of the family code.

The Islamist Minister hinted that demonstrations similar to those held against the National Plan for Women’s Integration in Development, enacted under the socialist government of Abderrahmane Youssoufi in 1999, were not far off.

Back then, thousands of Islamists hailing from the ruling Justice and Development Party (PJD) took to the streets of Casablanca against Youssoufi’s plan to include women in political and economic development, which they judged as “incompatible” with Sharia’a because it forbade polygamy and fixed the minimum age of marriage for women at 18 years old.

Still, current members of parliament are not too worried that today’s activism will see such a vehement reaction by conservatives.

“A national debate on this subject is at present necessary to amend the penal code and the code of the family. A legislative initiative is already being taken by the socialist group in parliament to guarantee more protection to minor girls,” Rhmani said.

The second chamber of parliament held a meeting on the subject last week. The president of the chamber, Mohamed Cheikh Biadilah, said the proposed amendments should be viewed in “the spirit of the new constitution”, adopted during the turbulence of the Arab Spring, which “commits the State to guarantee the social and economic rights of the family” and “to protect minors (regardless) of their family or social position” and “forbids any shape of discrimination based on gender.”

Biadilah also said, “The legislative power has the obligation to intervene every time it notices that a law has become incompatible with the development of the society.”

“All the laws that go against the dignity of women must be amended or even abolished “, said the president of the Chamber of Councilors in Moroccan parliament.

A government plan to reform Morocco’s dilapidated justice system, the details of which are still a mystery to the general public, has become the subject of much scepticism, especially from justice professionals around the country.

Justice Minister Mustapha Erramid told journalists on Apr. 6, “The national plan on justice reform will be launched this month,” but failed to specify what the reforms would entail.

Huge swathes of the population have long called for sweeping reforms of Morocco’s corrupt justice system. Following a wave of protests on Feb. 20, 2011, a group of magistrates that would later become the Club of the Magistrates of Morocco (CMC) created a Facebook page to address judges’ long-standing resentment about the clampdown on freedom of expression.

Furthermore, they claimed, the law allowed them no clear structure of professional organisation.

Last August, shortly after the CMC went viral, the police forbade judges from entering the premises on which they were scheduled to hold their association’s founding assembly. Undeterred, the judges simply held their meeting in the street, under the harsh summer sun.

On the virtual page and out in the street, the judges made their demands clear: freedom of expression and their own independent association, two requests that the country’s new constitution, approved on Jul. 1, 2011, had already acknowledged.

Still, the gap between rights on paper and rights in practice is very wide.

In a press declaration issued on Feb. 29, the president of the CMC in Casablanca, Abdelaziz El Baâli, said, ” (Improving) the material and social situation of the magistrates is a (necessary step) towards reform”, referring to the fact that Morocco’s magistrates have not had a salary increase since 1996.

Tensions are running high between the executive and judicial branches of the government, with the CMC threatening to “resort to unprecedented protests” and fixing May 15 as the final deadline for the government to answer judges’ demands.

The ‘Assabah’ daily newspaper reported, without clearly citing its sources, that the reform plan contains 13 strategic removals of existing laws, 28 action plans, and 174 measures all aimed at renewing the country’s legal infrastructure and computerising and modernising the judicial administration.

For citizens, these big promises say nothing about the justice system, which, they believe, must first and foremost be purged of corruption.

“A corrupt justice (system) cannot contribute anything to the fight against corruption,” Mohammed Jallab Elbouamri, a 55-year-old citizen from Casablanca, told IPS.

Various members of the political opposition share this view. Fouzia El Bayed, deputy of the Constitutional Union (UC), which holds 17 of the 379 seats in parliament, told IPS that Morocco’s legal system is blighted by malpractice and the abuse of power, which have eroded citizens’ trust in the rule of law.

Just last month, police arrested a judge in Tangier, 300 kilometres north of Casablanca, for corruption. According to the Justice Minister, the judge in question was caught red-handed receiving a sum of 70,000 dirham (approximately 663 euros) from a citizen.

Erramid revealed that the sting operation had been organised under the official direction of the Justice Ministry, following a tip-off from a conscientious citizen.

Simply increasing judges’ salaries, therefore, will not lead the way out of the crisis, El Bayed said, since the sector also suffers from a major shortage in human resources.

“We need more than 2,600 new magistrates to be able to handle the (ever-increasing) number of cases. At present, the country has just 3,400 magistrates handling three million cases every year.”

She stressed that it would also be necessary to do away with “administrative centralism and set up a new penal policy, whose philosophy is based on the realisation of justice.”

Anass Saadoun, another member of CMC, has published several articles on justice reform in various local newspapers, where he stresses that Moroccan society must abandon the idea that judges are entitled to a luxurious lifestyle, beyond the reach of their modest incomes. This widespread perception, he says, has laid the groundwork for corruption throughout the legal system.

Though hope in the efficacy of judicial reform still persists among the political class, most ordinary citizens are pessimistic, to say the least.

”We all know that the barons of dirty money manipulate everything in this country. They are corrupt and sabotage all those who resist them,” Abderrafie Lwali, a 27-year-old citizen from Asilah, 230 kilometres north of Casablanca, told IPS.

The country will have to act fast in order to withstand winds from the Arab Spring that are still blowing around the kingdom. Thus far the Moroccan government has been able to appease its citizens with satisfactory reforms, thereby warding off more incendiary protests; but the judges’ rancour will not be easily abated.

“We are no longer in the era of miracles,” acknowledged Elbouamri. Rather, people are counting on the balance of power between the government and its citizens to bring about much-needed change.

Like others, he believes reforms are a matter of political will. Currently, the government “has the necessary support to lead (an overhaul) of the justice system.”

Whether it will use this support for positive change remains to be seen.

By Abderrahim El Ouali
CASABLANCA, Mar 15 2012 (IPS)

An unprecedented cold spell that struck Morocco in February and continues to linger well into March has raised serious questions about the country’s national agricultural development programme, which will fail to achieve its desired results if climate change continues to be mismanaged.

The ‘Green Morocco Plan’ was launched last year with the aim of remedying major obstacles that still hinder development of the agricultural sector, tackling everything from ensuring food security for 32 million Moroccans, to meeting the requirements of European markets, the biggest consumers of Moroccan produce.

However, the Plan does not do a thorough job of diagnosing climate factors, citing only drought, which it considers ‘periodical’, as an impediment to successful farming. The report does not address the sudden and unexpected arrival of cold weather, whose damages have been no less than disastrous.

Last February, more than 8,200 of the country’s 8,700 hectares of potatoes, were ravaged. A further 14,000 of about 21,000 hectares reserved for sugarcane were also blighted by the cold. This is particularly significant since potatoes and sugar are two of Morocco’s primary export commodities.

‘’We have never seen such a degree of cold. All that we worked for was completely destroyed,” Ahmed El Aiboudi, a farmer from the Ouled Frej region, 120 kilometres south of Casablanca, told IPS.

“We were not protected against this icy cold. Nobody expected it,” he added.

Nevertheless, for climatologists, such changes have been inevitable.

Mohammed-Said Karrouk, professor of climatology at Hassan II Mohamedia University and a United Nations expert on climate change, told IPS, “The Green Morocco Plan does not contain any (concrete mention of) management of climate change. All that is considered is the management of water resources, (but what is really needed) is a method for managing the totality of the changes.”

‘Managing the totality’ means especially taking into consideration the abrupt changes of temperature in both directions. “What we used to think of as the exception in the past is actually (now) the rule. The ascents and reductions in temperature are now more frequent than ever,” he explained.

Chemssi Bendriss, a farmer from the Benslimane region who said he had lost more than five hectares of potatoes, always reminds himself of the good old days when Morocco “had four clear seasons in the year.”

The population’s anxiety is justified. Agriculture contributes 19 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), supports 100,000 jobs in the food-processing industry, and supplies an income to 80 percent of Morocco’s 14 million peasants.

In spite of this essential role, the sector still suffers several setbacks including archaic agricultural practices. According to the ministry of agriculture, the country’s use of fertilisers by hectare is four times less than in France and national mechanisation is eleven times less than in Spain, the kingdom’s Northern neighbour. Meanwhile, the food-processing sector represents only 24 percent of the industrial units in the country.

However, though experts often cite the lack of industrialisation as the main obstacle to resilient agriculture, most farmers tend to take a different view.

“I believe that fertilisers and chemical processes are not what (we need). It would be sensible, on the contrary, to think of organic farming, because this is more profitable for farmers,” Abdelkebir Essaib, a farmer from the Ziyayda region, 80 kilometres Northeast of Casablanca, told IPS.

The Green Morocco Plan did not completely neglect this option. A project to produce organic olives has already been launched in the Southern region of Sraghna, approximately 300 kilometres from Casablanca.

Omar Zaki, a farmer from the region, told IPS, “The project will have a very positive impact on the daily life of inhabitants. It will create wealth and jobs opportunities for the population.”

Still, even organic farming is hindered by difficulties on the ground. The division of more than 70 percent of agricultural land into plots smaller than five hectares, according to the ministry of agriculture, remains one of the biggest problems.

The negative impacts of dated agricultural management also appear in the domination of cereal, which occupies 75 percent of agricultural land, though the crop contributes just five percent of total agricultural sales and 10 percent of total farm employment.

The situation has been aggravated, according to the Green Morocco Plan, by the shortage and the irregularity of rainfall, as well as the decrease of surface and subterranean water supplies caused by an extremely inefficient irrigation system.

However, the question is no longer how to face the lack of rainfall, but rather “to know how to manage (scarcity) and abundance at the same time,” said Karrouk.

“We are more and more exposed to strong inundations during the periods of intensive rainfall. Our infrastructure is not adapted to it. It is not any more a question of redirecting excess water towards the sea, but it is necessary to know how to save it during the periods of abundance to face times of drought,” he explained.

If the effects of climate change constantly escape the attention of Moroccan officials, it is not due to a lack of competence on the part of farmers to make their concerns heard, but to the lack of genuine outreach on the part of the government.

Mostafa Belaadassi, another farmer from the Ouled Frej region, told IPS, “Farmers are not being consulted enough to build up participatory solutions. The actual offices for agricultural advice lack both means and human resources.”

Though the Moroccan government established offices in most main villages to ensure the supply of technical advice years ago, no direct work with farmers has been carried out so far, he added.

Experts too feel that they have been overlooked by the government programme.

“I was never consulted officially by the government, whether during the elaboration of the Green Morocco Plan or (any) other. There were only some attempts to contain my criticism,” said Karrouk, who recently won the prestigious Albert Einstein Prize for his scientific contributions about climate change on the global level.

“This is not a technical matter, but a political and cultural one,” he concluded.

Excerpt:

Deadly clashes between police and youth in the Northeastern town of Taza last week suggest that, far from bringing change and stability, Morocco’s new government is simply repeating mistakes of the past, stoking tensions and fuelling a spate of protests against the regime.

Demonstrators outside the court in Taza. Credit: Abderrahim El Ouali/IPS.

In an effort to keep its population in check during the Arab Spring, the regime launched a process of reforms last February and brandished what it called ‘the Moroccan exception’, boasting of relative calm during a period of intense regional turmoil.

A new constitution took effect on Jul. 1, 2011, granting wider powers to the executive of the new government while supposedly cutting back the authority of the monarch.

This was followed by general elections last September, which were snapped up by the Islamists of the Justice and Development Party (PJD), whose general secretary, Abdelilah Benkirane, was subsequently named the head of the new government.

But Benkirane, who presented his programme to parliament last month, has thus far failed to deliver on his election pledges.

For instance, the promise to completely eradicate unemployment, which currently touches 19 percent of the working population, evaporated soon after his appointment, giving way to a negligible decrease in joblessness of a single percentage point.

Habib El Maliki, president of the Moroccan Centre for Conjuncture (CMC), told journalists on Jan. 20, “The government’s plans to fight joblessness were not strong enough. The programme determined objectives without means, and any programme without means is doomed to failure.”

Public opposition to political procrastination has been swift and the streets of Morocco have become a veritable minefield of tension.

Following a violent police clampdown on a demonstration by graduates demanding jobs outside the ministry of education in Rabat on Jan. 21, a 27-year-old unemployed graduate named Abdelwahab Zaidoun set himself ablaze in the streets.

Once a rare occurrence, self-immolation has become a much more frequent tactic in the Arab world, after Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian vegetable seller, burned himself alive last year, igniting from his simmering remains the revolutions known as the Arab Spring.

Zaidoun succumbed to his burns on Jan. 24, his tearful 25-year-old wife told the Associated Press last month, adding, “I accuse the makhzen (the ruling elite) of killing him.”

Zaidoun’s death, five days after the government’s inauguration in front of the parliament, triggered a wave of protest throughout the country. In several cities, protesters have called for the abolition of the monarchy.

One of the most incendiary protests so far sprang up in the city of Taza, one of the kingdom’s poorest regions, located 340 kilometres Northeast of Casablanca, on Feb. 1.

Here, the new Islamic government exposed its true colours, lashing out savagely in a police-protester confrontation that left about 100 people on both sides injured.

Rahim Moktafi, an activist from the ‘February 20th’ movement, was an eyewitness to the events.

“At first, the protests were peaceful. The police surrounded the city. They blocked Internet connections and cut off the telephone lines before beginning to club everybody,” he told IPS.

“The police even entered the houses of citizens to club them,” he added.

Videos shared on social networks showed civilians claiming that they were threatened with beatings and rape in their own homes.

“Morocco has always been one of the most violent regimes in the world, and the Islamist government is the best mask for the regime to go on with its same old practices,” Moktafi said.

Far from bringing much-needed change, “This government will only extend the tyranny for five more years,” he said.

Anger against the “bearded government”, as it is referred to in the local press, does not come only from the fields of confrontation with police.

In Marrakesh, 250 kilometres south of Casablanca, where demonstrations were held in solidarity with Taza, public anger is no less palpable.

Abou Zahrah, a Marrakesh-based activist with the February 20th movement, told IPS, “The arrival of the Islamists in the government is only a political manipulation by the regime.”

Another of Benkirane’s election campaign promises was a guaranteed minimum wage increase to 3000 dirham, approximately 465 dollars.

Once promised by the king, the wage increase has now been postponed to 2016, leaving the current minimum wage at 2300 dirham, roughly 290 dollars, per month.

According to Rachid Abou Zahrah, “the Islamist government will have no positive impact on citizens’ lives. The only increase we shall see will be in the number of veiled women.”

He is not being ironic. The fate of women’s rights in the era of the bearded government is a major cause for concern across huge swathes of the population.

During the presentation of his governmental declaration before parliament earlier this year, Benkirane was overshadowing a protest by women MPs against the lack of female representation in his government. Despite the ‘four women’ quota, only one was allowed to serve in the last government.

“The government is crushed between a modernist pole, represented by the revolutionary February 20th movement, and the traditionalists,” Aziz Nidae, a political activist from the city of Fez, nearly 300 kilometres north of Casablanca, told IPS.

But judging from the government’s recent actions and according to the analysis of the local press, the government has shown that its allegiances lie with the conservatives.

In fact Akhbar Al Yaoum, a local daily newspaper, remarked that the word ‘modernity’ was completely absent from the new government’s programme of action.

By Abderrahim El Ouali and - -
CASABLANCA, Nov 22 2011 (IPS)

When he decided to publicly express his views about Islam, Kacem El Ghazzali had no idea that he was going to be beaten up and his life threatened. In spite of this, he continues his fight from his country of asylum for the freedom of faith in the Islamic kingdom of Morocco.

Kacem El Ghazzali called the international community last year to intervene to end Sharia law in Arab and Muslim countries. A preacher in a mosque incited Muslims to kill him.

El Ghazzali, who was a student, received threats by e-mail and phone. Later, he was severely beaten by other students and administrative staff of his secondary school. Human rights activists then organised a campaign of solidarity with El Ghazzali, who was finally given political asylum in Switzerland in April.

El Ghazzali, who was born and brought up in Meknes, 230 km northeast of Casablanca, received a deep religious education from his father, who wanted him to be an Imam. Paradoxically, the young El Ghazzali saw religion as “a philosophy of persecution and oppression that throws all questions out of our galaxy.”

The “modern and democratic” Morocco did not tolerate such views made public by El Ghazzali on his blog, despite the official policy of openness. Freedom of religion, although guaranteed by the constitution, is still far from being so in the life of Moroccans.

The Moroccan penal code imposes up to three years’ imprisonment on a person who “destabilises” the faith of Muslims in the kingdom. In fact, Moroccans who are born Muslim but adopt another religion or atheism fall under this category.

The winds of the Arab Spring were unable to bring about a separation between politics and religion in this North African country of 32 million inhabitants. Islam, in the latest constitution, approved Jul. 1, continues to be the official religion of the State.

Demands of secularism were raised during the uprising dubbed the Movement of February 20th, but “the arrival of Islamists in the movement ruined the scene and has limited these demands before putting them completely aside,” El Ghazzali told IPS.

This opinion is not shared by some activists of the Movement. Mohamed Amine Manar, of Casablanca, told IPS that “Morocco is among the countries that respect the freedom of religion. The proof is that Moroccan Jews have always had the right to practise their religion.”

Morocco has a Jewish community of about 200,000, most of whom live abroad. This tolerance towards monotheist religions does not extend to those who leave Islam.

‘’That is an infringement on the personal freedoms of citizens and a grave violation of human rights,” El Ghazzali said. But the young political exile does not plan to give up. “We should first build political balance to defend individual freedoms in Morocco, and that’s what I am doing through my writings and the campaigns I organise,” he said.

“All Moroccans, politicians, as well as the general public, must be aware” of the cause, El Ghazzali said. The best way, according to him, is “to launch a wide public debate on the freedom of religion, with boldness and responsibility.”

However, the stake is not cultural for some. “The respect of the freedom of religion in Morocco would not be thanks to a culture of tolerance, but rather the fruit of pressure by the international community,” the activist Manar said.

‘’Mixing religion with politics has eventually produced a political Islam which refuses secularism,” yet has no plan to resolve the problems of the citizens,” El Ghazzali explained.

The beneficial effects of Moroccan political Islam begin with the State. ‘’They could not abandon the idea of the official religion. It is the religion of the majority that would prefer all forms of persecution to the fact that the State stops protecting religion.’’

The Moroccan constitution stipulates that the king is “Amir Al Mouminine” (the Commander of Believers). ‘’That makes of him a sacred person whom nobody can criticize or question,’’ El Ghazzali said.

‘’It is that sacredness which made that Moroccan contented – contrary to the other peoples in the region – with claiming reforms and not putting down the regime.’’

Excerpt:

Morocco’s offer of autonomy to Western Sahara to stave off demands for full independence is boomeranging on the kingdom with other regions now demanding similar freedom.

The autonomy proposal for Western Sahara was made at the United Nations in April 2007 to resolve a movement for independence simmering in the former Spanish colony.

The proposal has been consistently rejected by the Polisario front which will settle for nothing less than independence for the resource-rich territory, annexed by Morocco in 1975.

Polisario, which fought a guerilla war until 1991 to press independence, wants the issue to be resolved through a referendum. Eight rounds of negotiations between both parties in New York have failed.

But, the Moroccan initiative has encouraged activists to launch movements for autonomy in two other regions – northern Rif and Sousse in the south of the country.

In contrast to Western Sahara’s half a million people, Rif has 2.4 million inhabitants while Sousse has a population of approximately three million, according to the last official census carried out in 2004.

Both Rif and Sousse are populated by the Amazigh, an indigenous people, whose language was recognised as an official one along with Arabic under the new constitution, adopted on Jul. 1 this year.

But the problem is not just a linguistic one. “It is completely inconceivable that a single region enjoys autonomy,” Ahmed Khanboubi, Amazigh activist and researcher in political and economic sciences, told IPS.

“If autonomy is applied in one region, it has to be there in the others. Otherwise, it would amount to discrimination against other regions and citizens,” he said.

Other experts swear by the “advanced regionalisation” plan offered by King Mohamed VI in a speech on Mar. 9.

Habib Anoune, an expert in social and economic sciences, told IPS that autonomy for regions other than Western Sahara is a “long-term hypothesis which can be part of reality as well as imagination.”

Advanced regionalisation envisages division of the country into 12 regions with each one of them having an elected council, empowered to make local policies independently of the centre.

Khanboubi, however, said that regionalisation has to “emanate from citizens, to serve their interests” and not imposed on them from above. The reference was to the fact that the committee, tasked with drawing up the project, was appointed by the king and not elected democratically.

“It is necessary to take the opinion of citizens, instead of undertaking a cartographic division of the country from air-conditioned offices in Rabat,” Khanboubi said. Rabat, the capital, is 90 km north of Casablanca.

Regionalisation is not a completely new idea in Morocco. In 1971, the kingdom was divided into seven regions, and then 27 years later in 1996 King Hassan II further divided the country into 16 regions.

While a law governing regional councils was also voted in by parliament alongside, they have remained practically without any authority. “All the decisions are taken by governors,” Khanboubi said.

Governors are not elected but directly appointed by the king. The new constitution, approved in July, stipulates governors are appointed by the government.

“We have to end this supervision and let regional councils practise their full competence,” he added.

Anoune’s view is that advanced regionalisation will allow the modernisation and democratisation of the state by devolving authority from the centre to the region.

The sticking point seems to be where to draw the line on democratisation.

“The Moroccan state rushed in advanced regionalisation as a response to the movement for autonomy,” said Khanboubi. “In the future the fight for democracy will be in the regions – to establish autonomy.”

Since the beginning of protests in Morocco on Feb. 20 women have been at the vanguard. Many of the spokespersons of the protest movement have been women – observers and activists see this as a new phase of feminine emancipation in this North African country.

“We have waited enough. Women now are out to say it is time for justice to be made,” Safaa Ferradi, a local activist, told IPS.

“The great majority of women present in our movement are of a high cultural and academic level,” Rabah Nouami, a local leader of the 20th February movement in Casablanca, told IPS. “It is so honourable to see that most of the spokespersons on behalf of the movement are women. But women are not still influential at the level of decisions within the movement.”

In spite of the efforts made by the State and by civil society, women remain victims of violence and discrimination.

An official study by the government High Planning Commission showed that four forms of violence are still inflicted on Moroccan women – “physical, sexual, psychological, and economic.”

The new family code in this country of 32 million people came into effect in 2004. It gave women the right to divorce, to marry without paternal permission, as well a right to alimony in the case of divorce. The new code did not give women equal inheritance rights.

The problem, it seems, is not the legal texts “but the implementation of these texts,” Fatima Bouhraka, a writer on women issues, told IPS. The strongest resistance to women’s rights is cultural, according to Bouhraka. Moroccan culture considers “the man as the one who commands and who must be always obeyed.”

This culture is strengthened by other factors “like poverty and the ignorance of everyone’s rights and duties,” Taoufiki Belaid, a member of Amnesty International (AI), told IPS. Women who are victims of violence, as well as their attackers, “ignore their rights and duties,” Belaid said.

This does not mean that there are no actions being taken to increase awareness about women and their rights. Abderrahim Messoudi, who has been organising workshops about the issue in universities with a group belonging to the Moroccan Human Rights Association (AMDH), told IPS that the problem is the minimal participation of women themselves in such activities.

Women’s indifference towards the actions of civil society is due, according to independent feminine activists, to the perception that these actions are biased. “There is no real civil society. Everybody tries to manipulate the feminine cause according to his own interests,” Ferradi said.

But many disagree with this view. “Civil society has achieved in a few years what political parties were unable to do for decades,” Bouhraka said. But it is necessary, according to her, to completely separate civil society associations from political parties. “The more an association is independent, the more it is trusted.”

In Morocco, unhappiness with political parties is not a new thing. Only 37 percent of the electorate participated in the last general election in September 2007.

New electoral measures in Morocco call for women to occupy at least 30 of the 326 seats in parliament. But this does not satisfy Moroccan activists. “The parliament and the government will both stay mainly masculine,” Bouhraka said.

According to a study by the High Planning Commission carried out in 2010, women represent only 25 percent of the working population. Women are also disproportionately illiterate – more than 50.8 percent of Moroccan women cannot read and write.

Violence, economic and social discrimination have led women to the streets to protest under the colours of the Arab Spring. “Our demands are freedom, equality, and human dignity,” Ferradi said. “In our movement demands are equal for both women and men,” Nouami explained.

The new Moroccan constitution, approved Jul. 1, calls for a project to create equal sharing between men and women. But, “in Morocco, the brandished slogans are a one thing, reality is another,” Bouhraka stressed. “There are discreet hands which hinder any law favourable to the country and to the people.”

In spite of an amendment to the constitution, early general elections planned next October, and numerous social and economic reforms, the Moroccan monarchy may not survive the Arab Spring, activists say.

The new constitution, approved by public referendum on Jul. 1, decreased the powers of the king in both the legislative and executive fields. Now, a president of the government will be appointed from the largest party elected to parliament in the upcoming election.

Legislation has become the exclusive responsibility of the parliament, and the president of the government has the power to appoint and dismiss all senior officials, with the exception of those in the military – which remain the responsibility of the king.

The effects of the Arab Spring have been relatively moderate in Morocco, compared with its neighbours. For the most part, the people have been demanding a parliamentary monarchy where the king dominates, but does not govern.

However, some activists in Morocco are still pushing for further reform.

“Our revolution continues. The people will decide about the fate of the regime,” Hamza Mahfoud, one of the leaders of the 20th February Movement, told IPS.

The movement, led by independent activists, still protests every Sunday against the new constitution – demanding no less than a full parliamentary monarchy.

“The new constitution is only a (trick) to bypass the demands of democracy, freedom and dignity, formulated by the people,” Mahfoud said.

But experts on the subject do not share this opinion. Driss Lagrini, professor of political sciences at the Al Kadi Iyad University in Marrakesh, 250 kilometres south of Casablanca, told IPS that “the new constitution has strengthened public and individual freedoms.”

The new constitution was drafted by a committee of 19 experts – all named by the king – two weeks after demonstrations on Feb. 20, where more than 50,000 persons according to official sources, and hundreds of thousands according to organisers, demanded a new constitution based on a parliamentary monarchy.

Organising demonstrations without prior official authorisation is a crime carrying a prison sentence of up to five years under Moroccan penal law. But, instead of calling out the police, the government directed cameras of public TV channels at the demonstrators and broadcast reports on their demands. That was seen as a sign of a different approach, a willingness to compromise, and many spoke, then, about a “Moroccan exception”.

“‘Moroccan exception’ is simply a lie,” Mahfoud said. “All Arab regimes commit crimes (against) their peoples.” The only exception, according to him, is that the “Moroccan regime is hypocritical and through our actions we will reveal its hypocrisy.”

The tolerance that the Moroccan regime showed toward demonstrators on Feb. 20 did not continue for long. The police intervened violently on Mar. 13, leaving hundreds of wounded demonstrators. Two other rounds of violence occurred on May 22 and May 29 – one person was killed, and hundreds of fractures, cranial and thoracic traumas’ cases were reported.

“There were some limited cases where demonstrators (called for) overthrowing the regime in reaction to the violence committed by the police,” Soulaiman Raissouni, a journalist who has been covering demonstrations for the ‘Al Massae’ daily newspaper, told IPS.

The Moroccan regime reacted with flexibility to the protests, Abdelhadi Dahraoui, an activist from the 20th February movement, told IPS. “There is no possible comparison with the atrocities committed in Libya or in Tunisia.”

This ‘flexibility’ is not random, Lagrini said. “Protests in Morocco have always been a daily rite.” Reforms are not a new matter in Morocco. “The country has opted for political pluralism since the 60s, and began legal and political reforms in the 90s,” Lagrini said.

“We were not able to go beyond the parliamentary monarchy,” Dahraoui explained. But, according to him, “the king has kept some interesting executive powers in the new constitution.”

According to the new Moroccan constitution, the king has the power to dissolve the parliament and to dismiss ministers after having informed the president of the government – but he has no means to dismiss the president of the government.

On Jun. 17, King Mohamed VI announced the new constitution, and stressed that the document was not an end in itself. Then on Jul. 30 he declared that the spirit of the new constitution has to echo the everyday life of citizens by insuring freedom, good governance, and human dignity for all Moroccans.

However, the speeches of the king do not seem to convince everybody. “I was mercilessly clubbed on Mar. 13, only five days after the speech of the king where he spoke about widening public freedoms. Nothing is widened except bats on our heads,” Mahfoud said.

Despite 12 years of reform, Morocco’s universities continue to fall short of expectations, with students complaining that the training they get does not meet the demands of the job market.

Professors in this North African country of 32 million people echoed their students’ grievances, adding that Moroccan universities are poorly managed and riddled with corruption.

“The kind of training provided by universities remains poor and does not meet any of the educational, pedagogic, academic and intellectual conventional standards,” Zakaria Rmidi, a student preparing for his master’s degree in English studies, told IPS.

“We have not moved yet from the logic of teaching to that of training,” said Abdellatif Fetheddine, head of the Department of Philosophy at Hassan II-Mohammedia University in Casablanca, in an interview with IPS.

Morocco’s university system has been subject to reforms since 1999 when King Hassan II decided to institute wide-ranging measures in the field of education. The reform aimed especially at adapting university training to the needs of the job market. Hassan II, however, died that same year. He had ruled Morocco for nearly four decades since 1961.

But the death of the king did not stop the reforms, which were continued by his successor, Mohamed VI. In a speech on Oct. 8, 1999, the king said the purpose of the reform was “educating good citizens capable of acquiring knowledge and skills” as well as “the rationalisation of expenses reserved for education, and the protection of these public funds from any abuse or manipulation.”

Less than a year later on May 19, 2000, the Moroccan parliament enacted a new law granting total administrative and financial autonomy to Morocco’s 15 universities.

According to official figures by the Ministry of National Education, the total number of students in these universities during the academic year 2009-2010 reached 306,595.

The law established a modular system of training, with the academic year divided into semesters. Also for the first time, master’s degrees were created, replacing the former system where universities granted only Diplomas of In-depth studies (DEA) and Diplomas of Higher Education (DES).

But these educational reforms do not satisfy students. “University education in Morocco is much more quantitative than qualitative,” Rmidi explained. “Students sometimes find themselves having nine to 10 subjects within the same semester, dealing with plenty of material, studying up to 24 hours a week. They are required to be present in all the sessions and to prepare presentations on what they study.”

Despite this, the new system still has a long way to go before it reaches the goal of reform laid out 12 years ago. Rmidi said that because of the incompatibility with the employment market, students have “lost trust in universities as a place of knowledge and thought.”

“A lot of students who get their baccalaureate would prefer to go to a vocational training institute instead of going to university. Sometimes, even those who go to university can opt for another two years training in a vocational institute after they get their license degrees,” Rmidi added.

The problem is not only educational. Professors also complain of poor working conditions, including the lack infrastructure and facilities, Rmidi said.

The causes are not necessarily financial, a case in point being the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Ben Msik, affiliated to Hassan II-Mohammedia University in Casablanca. An official statement of accounts of the faculty, a copy of which IPS obtained, says it spent over 6.3 million dirhams (more than 800,000 dollars) in 2010 alone.

The statement also showed that of this amount, more than 480,000 dirhams (60,000 dollars) were spent on catering and accommodation. The faculty has no restaurant and no residence halls for students. In contrast, the faculty spent only 633 dollars for new books for the library.

The dean of the faculty refused an IPS request for an interview.

Those who raise their voices against these practices have gotten into trouble. Mohamed Said Karrouk, professor of climatology in the same faculty, wrote several letters to the administration to denounce mismanagement, corruption, and falsification of documents, only to find himself dragged before a disciplinary council.

“They did not even open an investigation to show whether I am right or wrong,” he told IPS.

When resistance to reform comes from those supposed to apply it, “this reform remains only on paper,” Abdelmajid Jahfa, a member of the National Syndicate of Higher Education, told IPS.

“I do not see absolutely any advantages of the system. What advantages exist are completely demolished by an archaic administrative system,” he said.

“We still need to democratise more the management of the university. We need to reform the reform,” Abdellatif Fetheddine said.