I can’t resist not blogging once more about the political scene in Morocco.  Since my last series of blog-posts about Moroccan politics, things have well changed.  The most important of which is Si Fouad’s outgoings: creating a mouvement, going on national tours, and lastly changing the movement to a party! The buzz has been spreading online through multiple websites, a neat bio on wikipedia, and so many groups on facebook. And of course, trouble may come at any time…

Si Abbas,  the Kingdom’s prime minister, has also been making the news. Regarded as the odd man out of the new era, he hasn’t yet made any substential change to the course of Moroccan politics.  His relation with the  press has not been so peaceful and he had to mend it at times as when HE called on “Jeune Afrique” to be interviewed. Some hours ago, Abbas got elected (a 3rd term in office) as the secretery general of his party. According to the party’s constitution, a SG can go only for two terms in office. That brings to mind other Arab world stories….

The next communal elections will be held on June 12th, 2009 as announced by the King. More than 16 million voters will choose some 24,000 counsellors. Candidates representing 30 political parties will run in the elections. But will these elections be any different for the previous one(s)? Will Si Fouad’s party make any change? Will people go to vote? Will the current economic crisis in Morocco and the world affect the way people think about politics?…

Well, there seem to be many questions to answer. So let see how things evolve.

To be continued…

People take decisions each beginning of year. A simple search on google turns more than 100K results. Some resolutions are about daily life routine like going on diet, more blogging,  doing less housework or spending more time with family while other resolutions tend to be more utopic like hoping for a pieceful world, a greener planet or more prosperity to the world.

The one thing I have learnt from taking such resolutions is that there are some things that work and others that simply never do!

This year I have decided to make a wish list for everything that I want and then shortlist it to leave the three most important resolutions to keep.  This way, I will have sort of primary resolutions that constitute a priority and other secondary resolutions that might fill up the emty time slots in my life.

2008 Resolutions I’m proud of:

• Reading papers on a daily basis
• Spending the Sunday morning in a café. ( Oh yes, that’s manish!!)
• Responding to ALL emails timely
• Adopting GTD

The 2009 wish list goes like this:

• Get an opportunity to get an MA
• Workout regularly
• read at least a book each trimester
• Reach a satisfactory work balance
• Improve my presentation skills
• Travel more in Morocco and abroad to discover new things
• Publish some of my photos and get a nice pro camera
• Blog more regularly
• Make blogs by themes. One for techie, anothers for my travels with pics and reflections (no later said than done here)
• Get married!
• Seek a carreer change
• Get a car
• get a notebook (laptop)

….and the shortlist is:

To be editted shortly…

I am a calm guy by nature but one day I may do like the guy in the restroom.

One day when enough is enough.

Have you ever been streesed? What your usual reaction?

I usually don’t celebrate Christmas but I will make it snow this year thanks to Matt.

Let it snow! Let it snow!

There’s something weired in politics; addiction.After the previous 3 posts on the 07 Moroccan elections, visits to my blog doubled and I got a record of 60 visits in one day from many people I don’t know. My technorati rank moved from 3 million and something’th to 2,515,283…Anyway, being someone whose cup of coffee isn’t politics, I am putting an end to the series of posts about the 2007 elections.May be not for long…PS: The king still needs to appoint a PM !!!Edit:

King Mohammed VI has appointed Istiqlal Secretary-General Abbas El Fassi as Morocco’s new Prime Minister, in line with the results of the September 7th legislative elections in which Istiqlal took first place with 52 seats in the lower chamber of the Moroccan Parliament. more…

The PM’s site is updated as well.

I don’t get why elections are always held on Fridays in Morocco….

Anyway, the thing for me is that at the end I decided to vote and got the purple ink spot on my thumb for the rest of the day. I was encouraged by an interview with Bassir on 2m voting for the first time in his life as well.

What I can see is that though the Moroccan government for the first time have put a big budget on advertising, turnout was bellow expectations as can be seen from the news. May be the cause of this is that there was “no real debates by either the government or the opposition”, and the parties’ platforms were “global and ambiguous” as Mohammed Tozy has suggested.

Election results surprised a lot of analysts as the PJD came second after Listiqlal.

In the BBC’s Have Your Say a hot discussion was carried on by Moroccan citizens about the elections. I couldn’t take part personally but got a catch-up on their site.

The next question to be asked now is who’s going to be Morocco’s prime minister? knowing that Mr. Jettou has denied the position. I myself don’t know… so let’s wait and see.

In the mean time one can learn a lot from ibn Kafka’s article on Morocco’s elections: Money, personalisation of politics and public disaffection.

Enjoy the read…

To be continued…

Definitely, no precedent parliamentary elections in Morocco have been dugg the way it’s been done nowadays on the internet. I have spent today’s time infront of my PC to read what’s there in English and I must say that there’s a great deal out there.

I stumbled upon personal accounts (mainly blogs) of the elactions as well as professional provoking articles. My best read was a three part article by Ibn Kafka than can be found here, here and here. This latter gives a brief history of Morocco and explains how things has worked in this country.

Some sites I found fishy like this one that has the name elections-maroc and claims to be the official election site when it is about the PPS! On the other hand, trying to check si Fouad’s website 10 minutes after midnight I found a meesage telling me that election compaign ends at midnight:

Notre campagne s’étant achevée le 6 septembre à minuit,
Nous vous donnons rendez-vous très bientôt sur la même adresse…

Almost all parties have had a bunch of pages online with their electoral programs. The REAL official 2007 elections site is a nice onestop place to learn everything about elections, constitutional procedures and statistics about candidates. It there that I learnt that tecahers may be the rulers of tomorrow’s Morocco!

Still, I haven’t decided whether to vote or not! In case I go there which party will I go for? will it be worth the black ink spot on my thumb for 24 hours?

To be continued…

Politics is not my cup of coffee. However, I was forced to read a lot of stuff on my daily newspaper read. It is quite common place for party-supported papers to make some publicity. So called independent papers have also alloted a couple of pages for the coming elections.

Two days ago, I received an SMS from the USFP to go and vote for them! In the evening I noticed that my Yahoo spam folder contained another incitation to go and vote for them!!!! As far as my law-knowledge goes that should be against law heh ??! but that was undoubtedly the last straw that pushed me to make a post(s) about Parties elections in Morocco. (at least Moroccan parties have achieved sth!)

First of all, I brushed up on what the Moroccan Government is and took at the COMPLETE list of political parties. Wikipedia has kindly categorized them into major, medium and minor parties but forgot to put their logos as it is the only way more that 50% of Moroccans would recognize their reprentatives. And because I’m too bad at remembring names, the CIA’s site helped me recall the names and positions of our ministers. Infact, many of them are on the run. To my surprise, I bumped upon Karim Ghallab with a nice Jellaba two blocks from where I live checking with his fellow party members.

Having known what it is all about, I needed to know what I should be doing on the big day. The guide to September 7th: Morocco’s election procedure was a nice read probably by a Moroccan.

The most intersting thing in this elections to the Hous of Representatives is that comment is free and many people are speaking thirs minds about what’s happening in an unprecedented way as far as I can see. The maghribia.com , for example, offers in its English version an open space for people to talk freely about the event and their expectations. Selwane.tv, another Moroccan site has made great use of video production facilities and created a nice digest of inteviews with Parties, citizens, civic society and even a Bonus including funny interviews.

To be continued….