Reforme.ma

Reforme.ma

By Conor Godfrey, on April 20, 2011
Oh the internet.

Sometimes it helps homophobic crazy people find other homophobic crazy people; sometimes it organizes revolutions to topple dictators; and sometimes, just sometimes, it organizes an orderly, open debate on the challenges facing a rapidly changing society.

For the last several centuries, Morocco has been the sleepy cousin of the Arab world.

Their Arabic dialect is difficult for other Arabs to understand; their beautiful country is better known for rugs and hashish then political turmoil; and for the most part, they have mostly stayed off Al-Jazzera during the putative Arab Spring.

Well, it turns out that Moroccan internet users, of which there are 10,442,500 – 33.4% of the population, have been channeling some of their political energies into a novel website created by two Moroccans– http://www.reforme.ma/en.

On this website, Moroccans can explore the proposed constitutional changes proposed by King Mohamed VI, and comment on any of the articles of the constitution.

King Mohamed VI

ANY of the articles are up for discussion; including the first– “Morocco shall have a democratic, social and constitutional Monarchy.”

A bit of a sensitive one, that.

In fact, Moroccans have taken to online political commentary with gusto, leaving comments about article one left and right—Jeune Afrique reported that to date about 6,000 people have voted for the text of the first article , and nearly 2,000 users have voiced dissatisfaction.

I assume there is a bit of web censorship to make sure people don’t leave extreme comments, but I spent some time reading the various comments and I assure you that the debate is real, and the exchange of ideas meaningful.

When Morocco has made the news for public protests. the demonstrators have been fewer in number, peaceful, and full of better-than-average poster slogans such as “No to the Economic Oligarchy,” and “All citizens, no subjects.”

Moroccan Protesters

Many of the demonstrators openly support the monarch—very very few call for his downfall.

There are two ways to look at this I suppose.

Either:
A) King Mohammed VI manipulated the public expertly, offering just enough reform to calm public anger, but escaped without having to make substantive changes to his position,
or
B) this is simply how peaceful change comes about.

Actually, I think it is both.

Power concedes nothing voluntarily.

The bureaucracy of changing the constitution might water down the impact of the change over time, but there is no going back.

King Mohamed saw how quickly calls in the Bahraini or Yemeni streets turned from “Reform! Reform!” to “Get ‘em out!”

When history writes the story of the Arab world’s modern awakening, Morocco might just emerge as the country that gradually liberalized and developed while everyone else was looking the other way.

One thought on “Reforme.ma

  1. I’d like to add on to the thought at the end. While there is of course suppression of truly free speech in Morocco, it also needs to be understood that for the most part, Moroccans sincerely love their King. Not like, not support, but love. Westerns may see this as antiquated, and maybe even superstitious, as some of that love comes from the belief that MoVI is a descendent of the prophet. But it is also based in historical events. Hassan II, Mohamaed VI’s father, was a hard dictator whose repressive rule is still present in many people’s mind. His son, in contrast, is an angel. He champions education and women’s rights, has put the development of rural areas at the top of his agenda (in theory anyway), and even set up surf and jet ski clubs. In short, he’s cool. He’s young, modern, and a very real symbol of hope and progress for Moroccans.

    I’m sure that the crown took make strenuous efforts since the uprising in Tunisia to make sure the sentiment to spill over into the streets of Morocco, but, I don’t think their job was all that difficult to begin with.

    What happened yesterday in Marrakesh, doesn’t have a place in this discussion. No one has claimed responsibility as of yet, but this doesn’t appear to be a critique on the government, but instead something placed in hatred of foreigners. But I could write a whole paper based on that …. 🙂

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