Moroccan Elections for the Clueless Vol.18

And the Campaign is off! Candidates are competing, parties are trying to lure the voters with not so much clever videos; but nonetheless the campaign has started cahin-caha.

Brought to You by the Interior Ministry

The Interior Ministry released figures on competing parties and their candidates; it is quite astonishing to discover that among those 7102 candidates seeking public office, some odd political parties joining in – CNI (with 300 candidates) a fellow Left Alliance member with PSU and PADS- and smaller, more obscure organizations (among others, Choura & Istiqlal party are endorsing 58 candidates) trying to make their way through a highly competitive, time and resources-consuming campaign.

The good news is, we shall have at least 80% of the next batch of Representatives (on local ballot) with a decent education degree: only 200 of these have no education, and realistically, only 23 to 50 can get into parliament. So on education requirement, the next parliament might well be more prepared to deal with the difficult task of representing the public. 90% of head ballot candidates have at least a High School degree – all 1,422 of them.

Though there is a national ballot list, women are campaigning for local ballots as well, though it is worth pointing out only 5% of those are Women-led. Diversity with ‘young’ candidates (it is a bit of stretch to consider all those 35-yo when the median age among adult population is closer to 30, and overall median age is 20-24) and Women -who are way under-represented with respect to their relative share in total population, i.e. 50.8% of total population, 48.7% of adult population. Perhaps local lists are diverse enough to try to attract gender and demographic votes, but the ballot system is such only n°1 and n°2 are guaranteed a seat if their win is large enough, the others have a much lower chance to make it to Parliament house.

7102 candidates - 395 seats. And the crowd goes wild - if only.

How many of these will manage to get a seat? Well, it depends on only too many things. in any case, there still is a definite strong emphasis on rural constituencies to the expenses of urban districts: following HCP figures, there should be 13Mln Urban adult eligible voters vs 8.5Mln rural potential voters.

Now we don’t have much information about the break-down per registered voters, but all indicators seem to point out that rural constituencies are allocated a lot more seats, in terms of total and adult population that is. Aousserd (pop. 73,000)  retains two seats, while My Rachid district (pop. 207,000) retains 3 seats even though total population is 3 times higher. There are indeed some regional balances to be insured, but the fact of the matter is, even with the modest increases of seats in the Casablanca metropolitan area and in other cities (Tangiers and Temara-Skhirat for instance) there still is a sizeable advantage to rural seats, and some parties (PJD) may not, after all, benefit from the changes amid the increase of number of seats from 325 to 395.

The figures are out there, selected candidates denote of some effort put in presentational details, and the public shall see for themselves who is fit for office.

PC – Intellectual Bullying

It really is nothing. I am just reporting on how a twitter banter turned ugly when the PC brigade barged in, charging full speed ahead at the sight of what was perceived as “disrespectful” joke -to Islam, no less. I guess social conservatives are not endowed with a generous sense of humour. Perhaps it humour itself is Haram, I don’t know: I am waiting for a Fatwa from Cheikh Zemzami on that matter, I am sure he will produce some scholarly work on the topic. Anyway; yesterday’s discussion showed open-mindedness and sense of humour are not a zealot’s strongest suit.

Let me first put things in context: PJD manifesto pledged to ban all media content designed at “objectifying” women’s body (the PJD therefore implies executive and legislative officials have the power to rule on that matter). Now, this bizarre pledge is either a bid on behalf of PJD to rekindle with their hardcore conservative base (as if PJD boss Abdelilah Benkirane was not bellicose enough) or a crafty move to court the die-hard feminists of Morocco. Make your pick; the pledge goes:

148. La femme dans les médias:

* Interdiction de la chosification du corps féminin à des fins commerciaux, réduisant la femme à sa seule dimension sexuelle

So I tweeted on that, underlying the gender bias aspect of their proposal, with a rather snide remark that PJD would not oppose Chippendales (or “Dancing Bears”) on display, on media outlets; A couple of tweeps chipped in with quite an elaborate Pedobear analogy; to the benefit of the uninformed, Pedobear is an Internet meme with strong Pedophilia connotations. And as far as I understand it, dark humour has not been outlawed yet, and I should hope things will remain the same. If Religious zealots cannot stand the heat of humour, they’d better stay out of.

All was well then, until socially conservative elements joined in the conversation, and all PC hell broke loose: “you might not be a Muslim, but be respectful”. I guess the “Pedobear is Sunna” jibe triggered the half-irate comment, then another one -this time from an acquaintance of mine. I suppose the suggested dubious link between Pedobear and PJD was understood as yet another Islamophobe attack linking up Islam and Pedophilia. It just shows how sensitive the subject it, to the point that one person apoligized and retracted the controversial tweet. Yet another victory for the PC-Politically Correct, and dare I say, Intellectual Bullying.

This brief anecdote shows how eager crypt-fundamentalists are making others toe the line when it comes to jokes and Islam; I am sorry, but when the likes of Cheikh Maghraoui and Abdelbari Zemzami are let loose and not held accountable for their fire-and-brimstone statements, when PJD can afford to include misogynist statement in an electoral manifesto and get away with it, their behaviour is a far more serious insult to Islam than a harmless, and quite an elaborate joke. The infamous Cheikh Maghraoui, the author of a Fatwa allowing under-age marriage, triggered a media storm, after which he discreetly left Morocco for… Saudi Arabia, the Wahhabi paradise of Women’s rights.

Any similarities between the meme and an infamous Cheikh is fortuitous. Or not.

He returned home to Marrakesh a couple of months ago, where a rapturous large crowd was waiting to greet him at the Airport. The man has never been officially called for testimony; He buttressed his Fatwa by stating that the Prophet Muhammad married 9-years old Aisha; in the Scholar’s mind, Paedophilia was Sunna -and no one from the Religious Council dared challenge his statement; Nobody then thought Maghraoui was insulting Islam; no public legal action was undertaken against the Cheikh.

Pour cela, Cheikh Maghraoui évoque l’interprétation directe du texte du hadith où il est rapporté que le prophète a épousé Aïcha alors que celle-ci n’avait que 9 ans. D’ailleurs, en réponse à ses détracteurs, il a publié une mise au point où il reprend ces arguments et d’autres (les avis des quatre rites) et s’attarde en particulier sur la position du rite malékite, qui, selon lui, autorise le mariage précoce.

As for Zemazami, a high ranking official at the Habous Ministry and Member of Parliament, no official retribution was enacted when he released his bizarre Fatwa condoning Necrophilia; again, no official voice stood to call for Zemzami to retract his statement.

I guess Pedobear looks like a prude when compared to these freaks. PJD, Zemzami and Maghraoui have little in common indeed, but they do share the common feature of shielding themselves with Religion. It becomes difficult, hazardous indeed, to attack them for what they are: degenerate conservatives with an unhealthy obsession for sexual matters over earthly and more important issues. It shows how simplistic their vision of society is. If they are indeed keen on enforcing respect for Islam, I suggest they direct their anger first to the likes of Maghraoui and Zemzami; these are the ones giving Islam a bad name.

I suggest to my friend (and former Prep-school classmate) Sanae to rather have a look to the ways and means to improve standards of living, to how Habous assets are misused and squandered to the benefit of the happy few, or perhaps, more simply, to why the Law still allows for under-age girls marriage – if she disagrees with it, that is. I do hope also she will not let her strongly-held beliefs -a respectable quality- not to take over her intellect and turn her into a zealot. Moderation, after all is a praised quality in Muslim way of life, is it not?

Moroccan Elections for the Clueless Vol.14

There are going to be 13,626,357 registered voters going (or not) to the polls; since the last parliamentary 2007 elections, some 1,836,005 voters have vanished away from the then 15,462,362 registered voters. This post will try to find out what happened.

How can a Moroccan citizen lose the right to vote? Short of dying or serving a prison sentence, there are very few ways a Moroccan citizen would be denied registration. In fact, those cases where registered voters have to undergo some administrative changes have been listed in a communiqué from the Interior Ministry:

أما بخصوص التشطيبات التي باشرتها اللجان المذكورة، تنفيذا لأحكام القانون المنظم لعملية تجديد اللوائح الانتخابية العامة، فقد بلغت في المجموع 694.594 شطبا، منها 284.360 تهم حالات نقل التسجيل، و136.718 تهم الأشخاص الذين تأكد للجنة المختصة أنهم لا يستوفون شرط الإقامة الفعلية بتراب الجماعة أو المقاطعة، و95.704 تتعلق بعدم إثبات الأشخاص المعنيين بالأمر لهويتهم استنادا إلى بطائقهم الوطنية للتعريف، و63.740 تهم حالات الوفيات، و60.578 تتعلق بحالات فقدان الأهلية الانتخابية، و53.374 تتعلق بالتسجيلات المتكررة، إضافة إلى 120 حالة شطب استنادا إلى أحكام قضائية.

Those changes that actually reduce the number of registered voters are those unable to produce compelling ID documents (95,000) those who passed away (63,000) and those ex-voters who lost the right to vote (60,000). The other cases only re-arrange the total electoral corps. These changes, incidentally, are relative to the last time Electoral lists have been updated, and that was on May and June 2011, prior to the July Constitutional Referendum.

18-35 make up the bulk of total voters. But where are the first-time voters?

The communiqué boasts an additional 1,214,003 new registered voters, but one needs to take into account those crossed off the electoral list, which means that the actual new batch of fresh registered voters is only 519,409 and the sad news is, that’s roughly the number of voters PJD candidates got in 2007. More saddening is the fact that out of 21,586,000 adults (according to HCP computations) only 13 Million will be allowed to vote: more than a third of eligible Moroccans will not vote, and that alone says it all: our fellow citizens are not interested in national politics. While it might be true that 56% of those voters are less than 35years-old, it does not provide enough insight of how many of those first-time voters (specifically the 18-25 bandwidth) make up; more specifically, how many of the 4,453,000 young, first-time voters Moroccans are registered in these 7Mln?

With these figures at hand, I have to admit all those computations and speculations about the Youth vote, the Turnout and related indicators have been built out of thin air, and therefore lose all meaningful purpose, just like the next elections; this is the defeat of political activism on behalf of all political blocs before political apathy: Feb20 activists failed to enlist Moroccans in their struggle for democracy and their challenge to the regime; Officials failed to convince Moroccans to register en masse and thus buttress the claim these elections will have granite-solid legitimacy, and finally, political parties who did not seem interested in widening their popular base, and instead went for knifing each others – like in this unfortunate video where a petulant Benkirane blows off unnecessarily:

(video circulated by RNI-ADI activists)

This still does not explain how 1.8Mln voters vanished away from the registrars’ books, but it rather points out the way to explain it: fewer young voters are making up for the elderly -necessarily registered- who pass away. It is a known fact older people have higher registration rates; as reported by the RDH50 Report. While this does not show political apathy per se, it does however stress the lack of confidence partisan politicians enjoy among that population, one that makes up for 1/3 of total population.

The same HCP projections show that adult population aged less than 60 increased 1.4Mln between 2007 and 2011. The elderly population (60 and above) on the other hand, increases some 282,000, and among those aged 65 and above only 100,000. In other terms, the population that expericenced high levels of registration (a 60years-old Moroccan would have been a registered voter in 1972 with a much higher proportion back then) is giving way to one wtih much lower registration rates; indeed, while the elderly scored a 11% increase, the number of first-time voters (the 18-25 interval) managed only a third of this growth rate; so the replacement ratio, so to speak, does not apply; even under the most optimistic projections, only one out of three old voters is replaced at the other end of the age spectrum; When the mortality rate (around 120 per 1,000 adult) is computed on the elderly population (around 300,000) we can account for 1.2Mln out of the missing 1.8Mln. The rest being mainly split across population deprived from civil rights (with a prison population standing around 63,000 according to reports) and the migration effects.

But one can be sure of it: the decline in the electoral corps is due to the non-replacement of old voters by the new generation; While it is true those born after 1975 make up half of total voters, those born in the 1980-1990s did not register in commensurate proportions to make up for demographic decline, and they certainly did not register in large numbers enough to match the adult population.

The Middle Class Rip Off

Much has been made of the Feb20 demonstrations, mainly as a sign of middle class unrest and discontent with perceived unfair distribution of wealth and political power. While it is understood only too many citizens have been excluded from, or ruled themselves out of,political representation – because of the generally corrupt and inadequate partisan political apparatus, the same argument cannot be made as easily about economic retribution;

The middle class in Morocco is both a political and economic maze to the observer, remain a tricky and elusive set of individuals, and any proposed criterion to determine the broad characteristics of such population is bound to trigger gainsay and recriminations for its arbitrary, almost deterministic approach. And yet, these are the people that may well hold the key to appease social and economic resentment, drive forward both the political process and the economic transition away from its current quagmire and into genuine prosperity.

The middle income as we define it.

My proposed definition of “Middle Class” does not stray from HCP established nomenclature; first because my own back-of-the-envelope computations tend to be vindicated by HCP findings, and second because the less controversial course is to settle for the Median Income as an indicator of the economic characteristics. The modus operandi is pretty straightforward: households are ranked per income, and then broken down into uniform quintile group (that is, per 20% sub-groups). The median quintile is therefore the third 20% -as it leaves as many households on its left as it does on its right. Then, we consider each quintile’s respective share in gross national income (GNI). Unfortunately, consistency isn’t HCP forte, and the IMF world data fields only 5 dates for the income distribution, further completed with some punctual HCP late figures on the matter: 1985, 1991, 1999, 2001 and 2007.

As we set in to track the median national income between 1999 and 2007, the findings point out a marked decrease in median share, down from 14.97% in 1999, to 14.54% in 2007, and the trend is to be confirmed by subsequent surveys. This dent in median wealth (-2.87%) almost mirrors the average GNI per capita growth over the same period (+2.83%) In simple words, the median income share has gone down at almost the same rate GNI per capita has gone up. And it seems all other quintiles but one have experienced similar trends. The only quintile households with a healthy 3.41% improvement were the top 20%, that is, those earning more than MAD 207,000 per annum (2007 figures).

But let us dig deeper in the “Middle Class malaise”; while it is understood their share in income has fell over time (a tale-telling sign of income concentration in this country) their real income has also gone down. The stated implication is not necessarily true: the share pie per person has grown some 3% a year, so even though it has grown smaller with respect to the whole pie, it may have grown in absolute terms nonetheless. But sadly for the Middle Class, that did not happen; quite the opposite.

But what about real income?

Between 1999 and 2007, median income per household has grown 1.48% in nominal terms. However, when adjusted for average (CPI) inflation,the real income has been steadily decreasing at 0.18%. This means the median households have accumulated a real loss in purchasing power of MAD 13,000 over the considered period. What does this tell us about all these economic policies carried ever since 1999?

And it is not like the median households are the only ones who bore the brunt of economic inequity; again, the top 20% are the only ones who actually improved their real income by MAD 11,000 overtime.The bottom 20% have increased their real income though: an accumulated MAD 51 over the considered 8 years – the top 20% improved their real income 215 times more than the bottom 20%. This is worse than a zero-sum game, it is, quite simply, a game heavily skewed towards the affluent, and public redistributive policies (i.e. fiscal policies) have done nothing to allay the inequity; it has only made it worse.

What holds in 2007 holds equally true for 2011 (even by the most optimistic projections of a stabilized income share with respect to the 2008 survey) as the median 20% saw their income share fall further to 13.2%.

... The Middle Class have been screwed up. In real terms.

A country with a weak middle class who cannot enjoy the proper benefits of growth, cannot sustain itself without serious risks of social unrest and discontent. What is worse, these subsidies the government has been so generously putting on the table only beat the inequity further in, as they benefit those with the highest absolute consumption levels.

Now that these numbers have put in perspective the ailing of our Middle Class, the guileless observer would now understand why a deep, structural change within our institutions and the economics of wealth redistribution need to be thoroughly reviewed.

And yes, Middle Class IS radical.

Mezouar Goes Viral

I came across that video of Salaheddine Mezouar, outgoing Finance Minister and (supposedly) leader of the “A8″ Alliance. Just watch:

I am cracking myself up with that! I love the contrasted collar, the cufflinks, the blue shirt with no tie, the relaxed posture… even the GODDAMN MAC LAPTOP and IPHONE/SMARTPHONE ON THE BACKGROUND! Seems Minister Mezouar has got all he needs to projects an image of modernity, youth and change (even though he has been around in all government ever since 2002, and his party has been in power since its foundation in 1977, hardly a factor of change, wouldn’t you say?)

Well, we nihilists are not getting the full democratic institutions we need, but we are at least issued the by-products of modern, mass-consumer democracy they serve in the UK, continental Europe or the USA: politicians on the web, trying to spin their image as hip and trying also to win over a small but apparently influential blogosphere, with the help of PR consultancy firms. I don’t know, but it seems Mezouar & Co are -so far- vastly overestimating what the Blogoma and Twittoma can do in terms of opinion leadership. And it’s a great thing, we can go around pushing our agendas. So my question to the Minister is as follows:

“Minister, Why don’t you raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for the debt you have been piling on over the last two years?”

“Monsieur le Ministre, pourquoi n’allez-vous pas augmenter la tranche marginale de l’impôt sur le revenu pour payer la dette accumulée ces deux dernières années?”

“سعادة الوزير، لماذا لا ترفع من سقف الضريبة على دخل الشريحة العليا لتسديد الديون التي راكمتها منذ سنتين؟”

Oh, and if any RNI operative comes across this, I’d suggest they have a read at the following to convince themselves I buttress my claims.

• Budget: Tightening Of the Screw
• Fiscal Legacy – Why Taxes need to be increased
• 10% Budget Cuts
• Fiscal Policy? What Fiscal Policy?

RNI: TROLOLOL since 1977