Rabat – The campaign has been punctuated by two events extraneous to it. The first one is the arrest of two French journalists caught red handed trying to blackmail the King of Morocco and extort money from him for not publishing a book they pretend would jeopardize his probity. The second is the video of the French foreign minister more drunk than the most sober of all lords and all monkeys of the diplomatic circus during a press conference. He had to be walked away stumbling out of sight from the sneers of journalists. The old chap was pitiful and pathetic.
These two events invited themselves in the campaign to support the arguments of those who needed further evidence of the moral decay of the West and of the alleged inherent immorality of the Western media which is presented to the rest of the world as the symbol of objectivity and of the respect for human rights.
Another event, of an internal nature this time, drew the attention of observers. Attaliaa Party, which is a member of the newly created Federation of the Democratic Left (FDG), announced its withdrawal from the contest in Benguerir as a protest against the inclusion of individuals from parties which had been involved in corrupt electoral behaviors in previous elections and who are not up to the probity standards the federation had agreed on. This event has been interpreted by some adversaries of the FGD as a sign of the frailty of the latter and a forerunner of its precocious fall like former unification attempts of the left. Important as it is, the case remains, however, isolated and not affecting the foundations of the Federation, for the time being, at least.
The campaign has also been marked by videos gone viral on the social media showing how the head of the government, also General Secretary of the leading party in the parliament, has been booed and ousted from meetings his own militants had organized. The population was calling him the worst names a politician wishes to hear, thief, embezzler, hypocrite, traitor, and the list goes on. In one voice and in chorus, the population chanted get out of here, get lost, go away. This phenomenon is actually new in Moroccan partisan politics and electoral campaigns. To my knowledge, very few cases have been recorded of electoral rallies torpedoed and undermined by adversaries. It might occur to one, however, that the strips that are circulated are but short episodes of the rallies had it not been for the scenes showing the man cutting his addresses and leaving the events under the close protection of his bodyguards, obviously unhappy.
To make things worse for the Head of the Government, pictures of his men distributing gifts, chicken, to the population were widely published. The distribution is further criticized as an early, therefore, illegal campaign. The party of the Head of the Government falls, thus, according to those disseminating this information, under the same category of those parties he accuses of illegal use of money and of abuse of administrative authority and therefore of corrupting the democratic process. A few minutes after the release of the picture allegedly incriminating PJD, a video was posted showing individuals giving away hens and roosters to potential women voters in a facility decorated with Istiqlal campaign posters. The war is taking place on the web also ! A colleague I talked to about it said nothing describes the situation better than ” set a thief to catch a thief !” I, however, will not be able to reiterate the saying as I am supposed to maintain a high degree of objectivity and impartiality.
A quick survey of the leaflets used by the parties and of their posts on the various platforms of the Internet reveals the lack of coherence of the local actions of many parties with their core principles. While a party like Istiqlal, for example, boasts candidates with experience, they have candidates who have never held a job and who specify that they are unemployed in their campaign materials. Likewise, while parties with an Islamic ideological referential claim that they adhere to the principles of the constitution which stipulate not to use religion in politics, the adoption of human rights, gender equality and equity and freedom, they circulate documents in which they are short of excommunicating opposition leaders for the “sins” of supporting women equality, individual freedoms, militating against polygamy and capital punishment and advocating for the supremacy of the international conventions and treaties the country has adhered to over national legislation. These are acts which campaign Islamist discourse is presenting as sin deserving punishment. Parties will defend themselves from this accusation as this literature is not distributed by their official warehouses. Everyone knows, however, how innovative merchandizing techniques of immaterial products are used to conceal both makers and direct beneficiaries. Circulating pictures of young people wearing PAM T-shirts apparently distributing kitchen oil bottles to the dwellers of a shanty neighborhood said to be in Tangiers widely has been an immediate reaction to the pictures of alleged PJD militant distributing chicken in a socially comparable quarter in the region. The sources doing the circulation do not have to identify themselves as belonging to this or that party. They can present themselves as Samaritans, but that doesn’t fool any one. Everyone knows who is warring whom, where and for which seats ! Some of these parties actually have armies of men and women behind keyboards day and night scrutinizing the net, commenting posts, posting, sharing, liking and trying to delete and erase … While it is also possible that the pictures may be of other events and in other places, the fact is that one of the most efficient firm of corruption is bribing long prior to the service and when no immediate return can be proved.
A person running for a seat in a constituency she/she has nothing to do with can go about shaking hands of people, hugging them, drinking tea and eating prickly pears with them, people will always know they don’t belong with them. Like the Minister in charge of housing who stands by homeless people sleeping in the streets of a big city, watching and wishing he had never been caught in that situation. Looking at the picture, one wonders what he must be thinking of and where those campaigning with him wish they were.
A survey published by PJD shows that not only is the party the most efficient user of the various opportunities of the Internet and social media but that its candidates are the most highly educated compared to those of other parties based both in numbers and percentages of holders of various degrees and diplomas. While no information was available about what areas the degrees and diplomas are in, some observers have raised the interesting question of the correlation between the level of education and the type and degree of corruptibility potential. In the absence of quantitative data, Impressionistic assessments of the population tend to suggest an increasing correlation of the corruptibility factor with higher degrees and diplomas, the argument being that the higher degree, the higher the responsibilities would usually be and the higher skills in playing with law and circumventing regulations.
Two last observations. In my mail box, PJD dropped two leaflets with pictures of candidates, their names and their professions. The leaflet requests my vote. The problem, however, is that nowhere in any of the leaflets is it explained why I should. No mention of a program, no promised actions, either. Why would they want anyone to vote for them while they don’t even care to give them one reason, good or bad, to do so. My friend tempted an explanation which I prefer not to go for. He said “this is vanity and pride. They assume everyone should know them so well by now that they don’t need to be told who they are and what they are about”.
The second observation is that many lists of candidates are made up almost exclusively of teachers, essentially primary and secondary schools. Having practiced this most honorable profession in the country and been around teachers for professional purposes for close to four decades, I am in a good position to attest of the high probity and honesty of these men and women and of their total abnegation and dedication to their duties and to the service of the nation. I am, however, also in such a situation that, for the specific purpose of managing my city and my region, I would rather give my vote to people coming from other professions more related to business management, perhaps to education management also, to business, economy, civil engineering, ecology, agronomy, architecture, industrial professions and the legal sectors. The argument is that there is no way of making sure a good honest teacher would make a good, efficient, professional manager of cities and regions. It just does not add up in my mind and the experience I am aware of does not encourage taking further risks this turning point of the history of the country. The culture, the attitudes, the skills and the competencies of the best teacher are simply not those of the best designer and manager of the type of projects and works involved in running and developing a city and a region. A few teachers in the list would be recommended but not more than two or three. In some cases, it seems that teachers are used as fillers to compensate for the deficit in other professions in the stock of human resources in the parties.
In a post of a colleague of mine running for PJD, he recommends FGD for those not wishing to vote for his party. He justifies his recommendation of a party at the other ideological extreme of his by the fact that although he does not share their ideology, they are honest people. He may have also written competent, or maybe, it was someone else who did. Besides it being a courageous political posture from a noble man, it might be motivated by the smart calculation of scattering votes by driving them away from actual heavy weight challengers who can cause serious problems to PJD in many constituencies. This being said, I trust there must have been earnestness in my colleague’s recommendation. He is not the one who does the strategic calculations, I don’t think. In fact, in an open letter he has released he explains that he is entering the contest almost against his will under the pressure of his comrades.
A language teacher friend of mine told me “I had decided not to vote for any party whose campaign materials have spelling mistakes or language errors, but I am finding out I am ruling out all the parties one could vote for and not feel guilty all their lives !” Actually, people are scandalized at the poor spelling skills and writing abilities of those in charge of the campaign materials. My friend admitted that he had to go back on his decision so that he could vote !
Listening to people talking and observing public debates about the elections, one would think that the battle is taking place among four or five parties and the rest are spectators or at best extras hoping to be noticed by a director who needs shadows in his film set. In fact, besides the open feud between PJD and Istiqlal, on the one hand, the struggle for survival between USFP and the secessionists that broke up with it and the mutual epidermic allergies that set FGD and the group it refers to as the administration bred parties against each other, the stakes are next to nil for the remaining parties. In fact, the principal contradictions seem to have been lost of view in the midst of secondary ones in these elections. The political struggle seems to have given way to egotistic competitions of individuals for leadership in a battle that is won and lost elsewhere and for reasons other than public interest or concern for the democratic process.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Morocco World News’ editorial policy
© Morocco World News. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, rewritten or redistributed without permission
The post Morocco’s Communal Elections: The Campaign Reveals Its Secrets appeared first on Morocco World News.
via Moroccan Trader – Morocco’s Communal Elections: The Campaign Reveals Its Secrets
Moroccan Trader 