ON THE night of February 19th 2011, Abouamar Tafnout, an activist from Casablanca, suddenly grew nervous. He had just watched a documentary on the civil war in Algeria. We don’t want that, he thought. Thousands of Moroccans were preparing to hit the streets the next day to challenge King Mohammed VI and the ruling elite, known to locals by the nickname makhzen (“the storehouse”), which controls much of the economy. Mr Tafnout, just 20 years old at the time, had helped to organise the protests. “I was afraid—afraid for the country,” he says.
But most of Morocco’s protesters, like Mr Tafnout, did not want a messy revolution. Rather, they pushed for a more constrained monarchy. When the king increased wages and pensions, and promised to relinquish some power, many were satisfied. A revision to the constitution, strengthening parliament, was passed by referendum in July 2011. Elections were held that November. Some blood was shed, but Morocco’s version of the Arab spring went rather smoothly.
Five years on, Morocco is stable, relatively free and increasingly prosperous. Compare that with the rest of the...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/1tdfEe4
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