Martin Jay: Morocco’s sauce Bernaise revolution continues to flow…but great expectations spoil the dish

 Real reform has to come deep from the people’s hearts themselves. It doesn’t come from a piece of cleverly worded text. It’s all about mindsets and how people might think they are modern and up to date with their thinking. Yet in reality many Moroccans are trapped in the past and the incident in the polling booth is really just one from a thousand. What on earth is the point of making the token steps to reform if people’s mentalities – particularly of state workers – is so stuck in the past? Imported democracy (i.e. the European model) can’t work here. One of the founding principles of democracy is openness and accountability – that’s to say, freedom of the press. I think I can honestly say from my experiences here – not only being chucked out of a polling station – that we have a long way to go in Morocco before we understand how important it is that journalists are given real freedom to work – and are not seen as enemies of the state.

And freedom to report, means real, unlimited freedom with no “red lines” which all foreign journalists are told about when they arrive in Rabat and want an accreditation.

It’s an argument that I often have with government ministers in Rabat who try and convince me that the imprisonment of a leading journalist Rachid Nini is justified. The truth is that even educated Moroccans in the civil service can’t conceptualize freedom, which sometimes is actually an unhinged and ugly beast to face. Nini, a publisher of a very popular newspaper called Al Masae uses a style of writing for his columns which is new to Morocco. He is a gossip-monger and sensationalist and reports on the scandals in the secret service right through to the private lives of government ministers. But the truth is that the state is not ready for this “style” of reporting, which it considers to be vulgar and so therefore has taken the only effective measure it can, by banging him up. This is just one crystallized example of how far we have to go on this road before the relevance of the text of the constitution has any real meaning.

Which is why I have rather switched off from the protests and how they are reported these days. Fev 20 missed the point. The largely extremist-Islamist organization has taken advantage of Morocco’s modern and liberal laws (the right to demonstrate freely in the streets) and used this to scream about what their vision is of a New Morocco, which at best is comical. It says a lot about how advanced Morocco is, that a political movement like this one has such pie-in-the-sky expectations about the country. It wants Morocco to leap to the constitutional set-up of the UK or Spain! At the drop of a hat! It expects the government to give its graduates jobs, simply because they took their degrees. It expects 1970s protectionist measures from Europe so that utilities, fuel and food stuffs are frozen. And above all it wants a considerable crackdown on corruption. But it takes two to be corrupt. But only one to stop it. Few in Morocco make any effort to really not bribe, but many complain like hell about the corruption which today in Morocco is so ubiquitous it is almost like an alternative fiscal system.

Again, don’t complain about it if you contribute toward it.

It’s true that there is a very amusing proverb which says “Dream big as it costs, no more” but this is madness. Fev 20 needs to stop smoking this massive ganja joint and come back down to Planet Reality. What is this about? In my view, ignorance. These folks, largely conservative Muslims from poor areas, seem to think that Morocco has an economic/socio/political set up like a European country. It doesn’t and it is not Europe. However, in the Arab context Morocco has unquestionably come far. The problem is that many of these “protestors” are either deluded about the realities of how things are in other countries – 20 percent unemployment in Spain and people living miserable lives in Greece – and deluded about how easily things could be changed by the king or a more dynamic cabinet of ministers.

Across the Arab world, the Arab Spring started by people demanding crumbs in the form of token democratic reforms from the high table. Tunisians and Egyptians wanted a mere handful of dust of hope for their children, while they happily starved. By contrast, in Morocco, people are screaming for more sauce to put on their steak.

Yes, there is poverty in Morocco and we shouldn’t lose sight of the very poor and their basic needs. But their justifiable cry for compassion is spoilt and discredited by university graduates who are too lazy to get off their fat behinds to find work, or are too proud to take an interim job for $300 a month in a telephone call center in the interim period. And even the Islamists. When you look hard at how some of them live, many are simply lazy and prefer to remain unemployed while their extended families support them, so they can go to the mosque five times a day – while looking down at the rest of us from their elevated pulpit, working to make ends meet.

There’s a lot of hypocrisy in Morocco and the hard-core religious lot are not exempt. Not by a long shot.

Last Sunday’s rally in Casablanca, which I missed, I understand from reports was much the same. But what point now is there to blabber on about trying to get real change in the country if you don’t have a real vision yourself? And furthermore, Fev 20 is beginning to look more and more like a joke now that it has become apparent how they were not involved in any debate about the new draft constitution as the chances of the King allowing them a part in that would be about the same as me getting Miss Morocco to come round and knock up a tasty tajin for me in my own kitchen. The government were never going to do the right thing about the constitution and play fair. Just like the lady in the polling booth who wanted to deny me the opportunity to film stock shots of voters, the state was not going to give the country any real time to debate.

In Europe similar referenda allows a “No” campaign sometimes months to debate what’s on the table. Moroccans were not given any time at all to even begin a debate – either through the media or other outlets. Furthermore the issues at stake had been distorted just before polling by bussing thousands of pro-monarchists, who, with their ranting and media coverage, seem to give the rest of the county the impression that the referendum was about whether you supported your king, or not. This of course was not at all what it was about, so many humble people were duped into voting a “yes” to show a loyalty to His Majesty, while not even caring to contemplate the details of the issue.

It reminded me of the controversial new European draft constitution a few years back in 2005 which the Spanish parliament – so eager to engorge itself with anything that Brussels did – actually voted to back it, without even reading the 300-page tome.

This is what happened in Morocco. The vast majority of Moroccans voted to say to His Majesty: “We love you and will always support you.”

I’m surprised though that quite respected corners of the media are still reporting that the King has handed over powers to the government. In reality, he really hasn’t but, crucially, he has diverted some responsibilities and so, when things go array, he will be able to look at his new government and blame the cabinet ministers for a whole new wave of shortcomings now that the level of expectations have risen again, even higher.

And here’s the crux of the matter which makes Morocco’s Arab Spring special and sets this country out from the pack. Levels of expectations.

The problem now is that great expectations – which are fuelling most of the discontent in Morocco – are now being cranked up yet again. Once a new government is in power after October elections, Moroccans will want to see real change. But how many of them will contribute toward it?

(Martin Jay is a veteran foreign correspondent who has worked extensively in Europe, the Middle East and Africa for most major international TV networks. He can be reached at makeminealargeoneincasa@yahoo.co.uk)