Coroner & Legal
Be thankful a free press exposes corruption …
A Moroccan visit reminded this tourist of how media clamps and baksheesh shackle people …
I have just arrived in Spain after a two-week trip with my family through Morocco.
We did what tourists do – rode camels into the Sahara desert; explored the maze-like medinas of Marrakesh and Fes; did battle with the world’s most persistent carpet salesmen (we lost); ate chicken tagine with preserved lemon and olives (many times).
We were also able to have a few conversations with ordinary Moroccans. Some of them were remarkably frank, on the understanding that they were talking to me unattributably.
Until just a few years ago, Morocco was an absolute monarchy. In 2011, with Tunisia, Libya and Egypt in turmoil, King Mohamed VI introduced reforms that, in theory, limited his power. An elected government now shares it.
In reality, my informants agreed, almost nothing has changed. As the scion of one of the oldest royal dynasties in the world, a direct descendant of the Prophet, and commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the king’s power has many aspects, religious, tribal, traditional and military. So long as he can command the loyalty of the army, police and gendarmerie, it remains almost untrammelled.
Criticism of him, his privileges, and his conduct of public policy is not encouraged. A few years ago, I was told, an enterprising journalist investigated the number and extent of the royal palaces that are scattered through the country. He claimed to have identifiedmore than 50, most of them sitting in well-watered gardens, with swimming pools, golf courses and private docks from which the king can indulge his passion for jet-skiing.
That journalist found that his career in Morocco was over, I was told. He now works in another country.
I haven’t been able to confirm that story. It may be apocryphal. But certainly media coverage of the king is fiercely constrained. In 2009, for example, two magazines had an issue seized and pulped because they had the temerity to print the results of an opinion poll about the king’s first decade on the throne – never mind that the poll was overwhelmingly positive. Three months later, a managing editor and two reporters were summarily jailed for publishing a straightforward report about the king’s health.
Nor are the media encouraged to expose one of the most baleful aspects of Morocco’s governance – its addiction to corruption, great and small.
Every few miles …
Read the full opinion piece here