Morocco's Masked Constitutional Reforms

M6, Still Illegitimate: Thousands of Moroccans demonstrated against Moroccan King Mohammed VI in Rabat in February, leading the king to announce constitutional reforms that will be voted on in early July. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

M6, as Morocco's king, Mohammed VI, likes to be known, doesn't get it. But none of the Arab and Muslim world's illegitimate leaders do: reforming their regimes is too late. The masses want a full clean-up. Morocco won't be getting it.

In a little over a week--on July 3, ironically a day before American Independence Day--Moroccans will go to the polls to vote on a new constitution. Mohammed appointed a commission to draw it up, promising a more open form of government, more parliamentary powers, more democracy, more human rights, more freedoms for the press.

He was, in other words, quaking in his boots at the prospect of becoming another domino in North Africa's ongoing sweep of despots and tyrants: Tunisia's Zine el-Abidine ben Ali was just sentenced, in absentia (he is hiding in Saudi Arabia), to 35 years in prison in a one-day trial, for embezzlement. He faces other charges, but this one is the starter. Egypt's Hosni Mubarak is living his last somewhere in Sinai, under house arrest. It appears that in Libya, the days of the Mad Dog of the Middle East, Muammar el-Qaddafi, are also numbered. Not much movement on removing Algeria's oppressive Bouteflika, but his day will surely come.

So Mohammed VI was panicking. The result is that new constitution, though it is really nothing new. He says it creates a constitutional monarchy. But the bottom line is that M6 remains the absolute monarch, just as Jordan's Abdullah does even as his pretensions to benevolence soar almost as high as Mohammed's ostentatious minarets.

The Economist aptly described those two this way last week: "The rulers of Morocco and Jordan, kingdoms with no oil wealth and close ties to the West, have long seen fit to defend their dynasties by leaving room for mild dissent, letting loyalist parties play politics and ever promising that this game will some day be real. But in both countries repeated feints at reform since their relatively young kings took power a decade ago have not much changed the underlying rules. Muhammad VI of Morocco and Abdullah II of Jordan still hire and fire prime ministers, command national armies and tolerate little criticism of themselves, much in the way of their grandfathers. Morocco's constitution holds the person of the king, also known as Commander of the Faithful, to be sacred and inviolate."

That's not about to change.

But the July 3 election will at least be a marker: it's already generating its own wave of protests. It may generate more. It should. Morocco's 32 million people can;t all fall for the charade. M6 has peddled those things before. He has been promising reforms for as long as he's been king, handing down a few, always as shreds rather than as truly reforming efforts, and he's stayed in power. He's trying to buy time with that new constitution. Moroccans know counterfeit currency when they see it now.

See Also:

• Mohammed VI: Profile
• Readers Respond: Mohammed VI's Dictatorship in Morocco
• BlogPulse: Morocco's Sclerosis
• Morocco Targets Shiites and Homosexuals
• Mohammed VI's Regime of Censorship in Morocco