Elections in Morocco 4 Final

 

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.

Elections in Morocco 3

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…

Elections in Morocco 2

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…

Elections in Morocco 1

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….