The Moroccan capital’s jet set was still slumbering after a late-night Rihanna concert a few weeks ago. The king was abroad, where he had been spotted wearing a collarless shirt and sports jacket in a chic district of Paris.
But at the Rabat headquarters of the country’s governing Islamist political party, dozens of the organisation’s lieutenants were up early, smartly coiffed and nibbling croissants ahead of an all-day Saturday strategy session. The topic: the continuing attempt by one of their coalition partners, the Istiqlal party, to bring down their government.
Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane, the ruling Justice and Development party’s (PJD) charismatic leader, urged his lieutenants to remain steadfast.
“This is not a game,” the portly, white-bearded party leader said in an hour-long speech that was interrupted by cheers of approval. “Politics is ideas, convictions, opinions. It takes years from people, fractions of their lives. This is a responsibility. You fixed on this path since your youth when you decided to let go of a life of leisure and you decided to become a party militant.”
The north African nation of 32m avoided the fate of other Arab states that are either undergoing cataclysmic upheaval or have tightened the screws of repression since a wave of political change swept across the region in 2011. But Morocco has embarked on a curious experiment that some suggest could provide a model for Middle East monarchies facing demands for change. Yet others argue just as convincingly that Morocco shows how impervious these nations are to substantial reform. As in Egypt, where a coup backed by the armed forces and judiciary toppled an elected Islamist government, Morocco’s experience shows the persistence of the so-called deep state in Arab nations.
Ostensibly, an elected government led by a populist Islamist political party shares power with the scion of a monarchical dynasty that dates back to the Middle Ages. But the king, the royal court and the security forces – collectively referred to as the makhzen – still hold sway over critical economic and policy matters.
The Islamists, however, are playing a long game. Despite his loyalty to the monarchy, Mr Benkirane is a talented politician fired up by his own agenda. Last year his government outraged the royal court by publishing the names of privileged individuals and companies who received coveted licences for contracts. It was a veritable who’s who of those in the good graces of the deep state: members of the judiciary, military, interior ministry and royal court.
For now, the Islamist party and the palace are engaged in an awkward dance, a strained and somewhat accidental partnership.
“We are in a situation where the palace and the Islamist government are cohabiting,” says Abdellah Tourabi, editor of the monthly magazine Zaman. “The tension is not just about money and power – it’s about politics in which they both have very different agendas.”
Morocco’s political path departed from other Arab monarchies with the 1999 ascent of King Mohamed VI, ending the cruel despotism of his father, Hassan II, who made the country synonymous with grave human rights violations. King Mohamed – who will turn 50 this summer – liberalised the nation’s politics, allowing press freedom and launching a truth commission to assess the crimes of his father’s regime. His aides fashioned him “the king of the poor” and he was hailed throughout the country for his down-to-earth manner even as deputies implemented liberalising economic policies that exacerbated the divide between rich and poor.
Despite the economic reforms, substantive political change stalled after a few years. Just as in other Arab countries, shadowy figures in the deep state and security establishment feared their various privileges were under threat. The king’s zeal for reform threatened the makhzen. Even as high-rise towers were built, wages stagnated and large swaths of the country remained mired in poverty and illiteracy. The bills for fuel and food subsidies and public salaries ballooned while tourism has weakened and foreign direct investment has dropped. Following bombings in Casablanca in 2003, authorities cracked down on all Islamists, including the PJD.
The 2011 Arab uprisings, which felled three governments in north Africa, also shook Morocco’s leadership. Protesters under the banner of the February 20 movement – which included liberals, leftists and Islamists – began marching in the streets.
“People went out in 53 cities on the same day at the same hour,” says Karim Tazi, a businessman and political activist who publishes the weekly political magazine TelQuel. “It was the first time in history. The crystal image of the king was broken. People began to talk. Moroccans discovered themselves as incredibly angry and fearless.”
But rather than crack down on protesters with teargas and truncheons, authorities granted demonstration permits. Within weeks of the protests, the king said he would present a revised constitution. The document granted parliament more power, the courts greater independence and the prime minister added responsibilities.
A crucial provision mandated that the king could choose a prime minister only from the biggest party in parliament. Crucially, the king retained authority over vital national security institutions and foreign policy.
Although the February 20 protesters complained that the charter did not go nearly far enough, it was passed overwhelmingly in a referendum hailed by Morocco’s western partners, primarily France, Spain and the US.
Banking on the king’s popularity, liberal and secular parties close to the royal court banded together in a general election for a new parliament and government based on the new constitution. In a stunning upset they lost to Mr Benkirane’s party, which had steadfastly refused to endorse the February 20 movement but suddenly became its greatest beneficiary.
“Even the PJD never thought it would win,” says Mehdi Ben Said, a member of the opposition, pro-monarchy Party of Authenticity and Modernity. His hand forced by his own constitution, King Mohamed chose the garrulous but steadfastly pro-monarchy Mr Benkirane as the premier over leaders of more left-leaning factions in the PJD. Lacking a majority of seats, the PJD formed a government with the Istiqlal party and two smaller leftist groupings.
The tension between the palace and the government is not just about money and power – it’s about politics
Tensions between Mr Benkirane and the country’s established order emerged immediately. The party imposed new rules on state television, demanding contracts be put out to tender. They cracked down on judges, government officials, educators and medical workers who drew pay even if they rarely showed up at work. They barred doctors earning state salaries from taking on private sector work.
The new government’s publication of the names of those who had received licences to operate buses and dig sand from beaches for building materials caused a stir.
“This was interpreted by the regime as a threat to a pillar of the regime,” says Mr Tazi. “The regime was exceptionally angry. No one in 50 years had dared to do this. These are the favours the regime gives to its cronies.”
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In Mr Benkirane, the makhzen confronted a popular prime minister from a party it had tried to eradicate and had described as an enemy of the crown in 2003. His colloquial, folksy speeches appealed to the country’s poor and lower middle classes. He was a talented speaker, his syntax smoothly gliding from roars of indignation over the plight of the disadvantaged to jocular ribbing of opponents.
The king countered the PJD’s rise by establishing a team of royal advisers who serve as a shadow cabinet. When the king wanted to protest about the US report on human rights in western Sahara he humiliated Saadedine Othmani, the foreign minister, by sending one of his own advisers to Washington instead.
Last week Abdelhamid Chabat, Istiqlal’s leader, triggered the crisis consuming Morocco by announcing the resignation of its ministers over Mr Benkirane’s unilateral style. “There is a charter of the majority that says all [decisions] should be taken by the majority,” says Mounia Rhoulam from Istiqlal’s parliamentary faction. “But Benkirane took decisions to raise prices without consulting with us.”
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Few believe the party would threaten to take so drastic a decision as to wreck the government without first gaining a nod of approval from King Mohamed, who along with Mr Benkirane must accept the resignations to force the PJD either to form a new coalition or call elections. Many Moroccans see a ploy to get the PJD to take the blame for unpopular subsidy reforms without tainting the centrist parties loyal to the king.
“Certain people say it’s a way to weaken the government or make it fall, so the people say this government has failed, and they won’t win elections,” says Slimane El Amrani, the number three in the PJD leadership. “There are indications of that.”
Some say the regime’s moves make Mr Benkirane’s party even more popular as sympathetic underdogs and victims of a conspiracy even as it controls some of the country’s most critical instruments of power. “Mr Benkirane is a master rhetorician,” says William Lawrence, the Rabat-based north Africa director for the International Crisis Group and a former US diplomat. “He positions himself simultaneously as the chief of the government and the chief of the opposition.”
If the makhzen has attempted to outmanoeuvre the PJD, it has tried to crush the February 20 activists. During a protest in May, a monthly event meant to keep the embers of February 20 alight, police flooded central Rabat’s Bab al Had Square, adjacent to the ancient walled fortress section of the city where the movement began. They beat back protesters with clubs, driving them from the square and hauling some away. The protesters’ efforts at turning the movement into a party have been thwarted.
“We tried to set up an association but we were blocked,” says Zineb Belmkaddem, an activist. “We will not get anything associated with February 20 approved.”
Many of the activists associated with the movement have retreated from politics, some bitter that their movement resulted in the rise of an Islamist political party that refused to take to the streets when it counted.
“The cleavage that exists is not between the palace and the PJD, but between people who are pro-democratic and those who want the status quo,” fumes Larbi Hilali, a blogger and February 20 activist.
Although the February 20 stalwarts refuse to acknowledge any positive results, the process they set in motion has created changes beyond anyone’s control.
“You can say there’s a little bit of backward momentum,” says Mr Tazi, the industrialist turned February 20 activist. “But in the long run it will get better.” He paused before adding: “It has gotten better.”
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The PJD: A party that revived politics
For the first time in Morocco in recent years, politics matters, thanks in large part to the rise of the Justice and Development party. The ornate halls of the parliament are filled with intrigue and higher stakes as the country’s elected officials grapple with economic troubles and try to outmanoeuvre each other.
“People never paid attention before to the government,” says Abdellah Tourabi, a historian. “Now they do.”
Despite attempts to paint the PJD as ineffective and frustrating its agenda, the party continues to compete effectively, performing well among people it has been wooing village by village, neighbourhood by neighbourhood for 30 years. The PJD or its coalition partners won three out of four seats in contention in Tangiers and Marrakech in October by-elections, and all five in February by-elections in Fez.
It has launched a virtual leadership school for young party cadres, whose members spend three days every month for two years studying different aspects of governance, including law and politics, before presenting a paper and taking a trip abroad to examine other parliamentary democracies.
Despite opposition claims of failures, PJD members point to projects undertaken in co-operation with the king, including a 3.2bn dirham ($374m) fund that brings healthcare to people in the countryside, a 160m dirham fund to help divorced women whose husbands refuse to pay alimony and a 50 per cent increase in allocations for food allowances for university students.
“We are working as a government in co-operation with other political institutions under the leadership of his majesty, not in opposition,” says Mustapha El Khalfi, a PJD leader now serving as communications minister.
The PJD’s rise has heated the political scene even if the king, his entourage and the security establishment keep tabs on everything.
Many parties are now looking to find their own populist firebrands in the mould of Abdelilah Benkirane, the PJD’s prime minister.
“Benkirane is a very good communicator,” says Mohamed Tozy, a professor of political science at Hassan II university in Casablanca.
“Now we have more and more guys like Benkirane who are coming to the political scene.”
