Morocco's King Mohammed VI sacked four ministers and barred five
former ministers from ever taking official duties last year. The king's "wrath"
comes as a rebuke for the government's poor performance and for "serious
dysfunctions" in a five-year development plan launched by the king in
2015 to promote socio-economic development in the northern al-Hoceima
region.
The unprecedented move by the Moroccan sovereign is
presented as an attempt by the palace to introduce some government
accountability. However, the sacking of government ministers is merely the
latest example of the increasing royal emasculation of the political class, and
an astute deflection from the palace's own responsibility in the current
socio-political malaise in Morocco.
More importantly, the latest royal move points to a
growing king's dilemma. The regime’s dual strategy of appearing above the
political fray, while at the same time managing the political system and
opposition forces is increasingly under duress. Through an interplay of
discursive and institutional mechanisms of control, the monarchy's
constant manipulation of the political party scene and civil society has
removed the buffer between the royal institution and the people, and has
exposed the palace to direct scrutiny.
This "political earthquake", as many in
Morocco have called the royal decision, comes a few months after the king's
throne day speech, which laid the blame for current political paralysis in
Morocco everywhere else but the monarchical regime. Last July, King Mohammed VI
delivered a strongly-worded opprobrium to the political elite chiding them for
lack of creativity and for hiding behind the palace.
In so doing, the king cast his institution above and
outside the political elite, as if Morocco was a true constitutional monarchy,
where the regime is at a distance from the travails of politics. Most notably,
the king didn't offer any words or vision that would appease the year-long
"Hirak" protests in the Hoceima region. Instead, he later gave amnesty to some imprisoned Hirak
activists in a gesture that further consecrates the regime's control of the
political system and, ironically, contradicts the narrative the king wove in
his speech.
The king's decree to sack government ministers comes a
few months after Morocco underwent a political crisis, which hindered the
ability of former Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane to form a government due
to a political gridlock manufactured by royalist political parties. This
showcased the supremacy of the regime vis-a-vis the political class, where
popularity and populism are reserved for the monarchy, and not for any one
political leader, as Benkirane found out last March.
In the throne day speech last July, the king
lamented that: "the evolution witnessed in Morocco in the political
domain and in the area of development has not led to the kind of positive
reaction you would expect from political parties, leaders, and government
officials when dealing with the real aspirations and concerns of
Moroccans."
The monarch excoriated those politicians
whose "mentalities have not evolved" to match that said
evolution. But unlike what the speech leads us to believe, the monarchy is
not a passive actor in the Moroccan state edifice. It is well-entrenched in the
system, and has for decades fostered a patronage system inimical to
transparency and accountability, and conducive to venal practices, rampant in
the Moroccan state and its institutions.
The royal decision aims to deflect away from the
palace's own shadow cabinet, which in fact holds most political and
administrative power, and whose members are the architects of the Makhzen state
and Morocco's neo-liberal policies. The kingdom may be, in the words of the
sovereign, "enjoying economic dynamism which creates
wealth," but that wealth has largely been concentrated in the orbit
of the palace and its cronies.
The discontent of the king is paradoxically a result of
decades of monarchical control over the political system and its management of
the political party scene. The regime has emptied it of any significance and
created a political vacuum.
The recycling of party coalitions in the
government allowed Morocco's monarchy for years to foster a set of
political practices that meet the needs of a modern state with an effective
concentration of power. The Moroccan monarchy has a long tradition of
manipulating opposition parties through cooptation within the formal political
sphere, allowing them some stake in nominal power.
In Morocco's political system, all political parties
must submit to the regime as a prerequisite for political
participation. Moroccan governments historically have been subverted by
the monarchy's far-reaching prerogatives and constitutional powers.
No government has had the effective political mandate
to govern. This has weakened the political parties in Morocco, which for the
most part suffer from a lack of mobilisation capacity. Elite consensus on the supremacy
of the regime prevents political parties from directly challenging the king's
power. The regime's ability to co-opt new bases of political appeal clutters
the public sphere, making it less open to alternatives from opposition
forces.
The regime's manipulation of the political system is
intentionally fragmented into "divided structures of contestation",
as the monarchy allows select political opponents to take part in the political
system while excluding others. These spheres of political contestation
condition government-opposition relations and dictate the rules of the game
under which the opposition plays within the formal political system. The
resulting recycling of political parties and coalitions is necessary to
maintain the facade of political participation.
But this strategy has run its course. While it has
sustained the monarchy in the past, the monarchy's constant control over the
political sphere is ill-devised in the post-Arab uprisings, where the protests
of February 20 and the current Hirak movement in al-Hoceima have somewhat
demystified the monarchy. The duality between regime and state that the
Palace has woven for decades to shield its edifice from any reproach is no
longer plausible in the eyes of an increasing number of Moroccans. The
monarchy’s consistent attempt to face new challenges to the state with old
autocratic tools shows significant fissures. Street demands would have been
absorbed by civil society and channelled through institutional mechanisms if
the Makhzen, at the behest of the palace, hadn't impoverished the political
scene and enfeebled its most promising actors. The king's scathing criticism of
the political elite is, in fact, a critique of his Makhzen. Moroccans
would welcome a true neutral stance from the monarchy, which might ease in turn
the looming king's dilemma.
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