These signs are ubiquitous around Morocco these days. If for nothing else, it is a rather expensive government campaign to make sure the new draft constitution gets approved in the upcoming popular referendum on July 1. Basically just saying “Yes to the Constitution,” the signs speak loads about the Moroccan royal response to its own homegrown version of the Arab Spring.
But they are also an unusually swift response to protests. One of the teachers here in ALIF, ustadh Hamil, a keen observer of Moroccan politics and who has been giving me daily half an hour lessons in post-independence Moroccan history, attributed the difference to the sensibility and the education of the King himself. The main protest movement, dubbed the February 20 movement, called for a boycott of the referendum since the draft constitution was itself adopted without supposedly any democratic input, thus making it “imposed.” Imposed however is a very loaded word. A group of experts was indeed convened by the King shortly after his March 9 speech, the first response to the protests which began February 20, composed of political scientists, technocrats and constitutional law scholars. I’ve been told that this group made the necessary consultations with different groups.
to be continued…
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