Zawaya

Moroccan political parties are unable to keep pace with citizens' aspirations

By: Ali Chaabani

As is well known, elections are a democratic procedure applied by communities that believe in democracy, equality and respect for the views, attitudes and orientations of their citizens, and that strive to apply the principle of justice and respect for the law, based on the steady belief which stipulates that modern democratic societies believe in pluralism and different political, intellectual, and economic views and orientations that would serve the community and its development. It has also become difficult to reach consensus and complete and full unanimity on the management of public affairs for all citizens. Therefore, it has become necessary to resort to elections with the objective to reach an absolute majority which will oversee and manage public affairs of citizens, based on clear and feasible programmes within a specified time frame. The political party, or alliance of political parties, is committed to implement those programmes before the end of the period determined by law, for it to be accountable afterward.

This was generally speaking, but for Morocco, the question still remains about the effectiveness of the application of these principles in the country, despite having begun the experience years ago. Despite the recurrence of collective and legislative electoral experiences held in Morocco since achieving independence, the reality is deteriorating and worsening. These elections could not, even once, sort political forces that are really capable of managing, conducting and serving public affairs of citizens with integrity, transparency and sincerity. Quite the contrary; what was observed and replicated across all previous experiences was serving narrow personal interests or political and ideological goals of parties in control of the elected assemblies, both in cities and in the countryside. The Moroccan citizen was unable to take advantage of these repeated experiences; the prevailing image now is his complaint, aversion and reluctance to participate in this game that has become open to him, and which only serves the interests of groups which he does not belong to. Unfortunately, the majority of political parties participating in collective elections, and according to the recent experience, moved far away from the real and noble goals of elections. Elections have become an objective rather than a means of screening new capable and qualified elites to serve the nation and citizens, and develop society and push it towards progress and development. The ultimate goal of these parties has become the competition for seats in order to obtain them by any means, even at the expense of law, principles, ethics and the dignity of citizens. For those reasons, these parties used all means – whether licit or not – and worked on attracting officials and businessmen, which led many practices to leak into the elections, such as bribery, bypassing laws, forgery, and anything that would help getting an additional seat. All observers have become convinced that the Moroccan political parties, without exception, are outdated and do not have the ability to read social reality and changes taking place in the country, nor can they interpret or control them. This led to the creation a huge gap between these parties and the people, for the former’s inability to keep pace with the aspirations of citizens and to meet their basic needs in employment, education, health and security. Municipalities are the mirror of society, and elected officials for municipalities are the elites of community. When these elites are below the required level, the attitudes are inevitably determined regarding them. Faced with such aspects of disability that political parties – and elected assemblies – suffer from, is it possible to wonder about the lessons to be learned from these elections? The management and operation of municipalities require attention to all details of day-to-day affairs of citizens in the municipality they belong to. So do municipalities have human resources with such a level? Do the laws governing them help to achieve these goals? Are the managers that are currently selected by the elections – with the way these elections are conducted – able to gain the trust of citizens? The truth is that those that gain the trust of citizens are very few, a few make an exception, and exceptions cannot be judged; and of course they do not make the rule. Most previous councils have included corrupted and corrupting elements that hindered the development take-off, which lead to the despair and mistrust of citizens. The judgment that is repeated by everyone is that the elected assemblies, no matter how many elections they held, are like previous councils, overshadowed by corruption, bribery, embezzlement of public money, and the service of personal interests.