I usually enjoy a good deal of Slate.com. It has funny product testing, decent movie reviews and regular coverage of supreme court decision that I, as a lay person, can understand.

Their mid-east coverage is a tad lacking however. While they seem to try to have
articles written by journalists with bona fides in the region they often seem to repeat many of the same hackneyed cliches in the media at large. A great example is a recent article about the upcoming elections in Morocco (by a former Brookings Scholar no less):

Furthermore, Morocco boasts a more conducive climate for democratization than perhaps any other Arab country. Over the last several years, major social reforms have helped cultivate a more liberal culture there—notably an overhaul of the family code that enhances women’s rights in marriage, divorce, and citizenship; and an agreement among political parties to reserve slots on a special national parliamentary ballot for women. Morocco also has a history of peaceful pluralism so firm that the population still includes several thousand Jews, who enjoy genuine freedom of worship and close ties to Israel. It also generally takes a relatively mellow approach to Islam, wherein veiled women and those wearing tank tops dine comfortably together in the many sidewalk cafes of the capital.

Okay, let’s look at what is wrong with this. The last sentence is pure lazy journalism.
The incredible dynamic of women who dress differently hanging out together is just as common in Bahrain, Kuwait, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan or even Egypt. All those
countries have women MP’s and several (all?) have women cabinet ministers. Plus,
are cafes in Rabat (one of the most liberal, if not the most liberal city in the country) the proper metric for judging the entire populace? Admittedly, not all those countries are thriving democracies, but I have a hard time believing that Morocco is any more democratic or has any more press freedom than Lebanon, Kuwait or Bahrain. Plus, can we in the USA be so high and mighty when we have congressional districts like this?

Syria, to take one example, also has a tremendous amount of peaceful pluralism, in both religions and ethnicities. Like Syria there are also radical elements in Morocco (e.g. Casablanca and Madrid bombings). So how is Morocco such an exceptionally fertile ground for liberalism?

So why, then, wouldn’t Moroccans be lining up at the polls? In fact, voter turnout has been trending downward in every election since the democratization push began in 2002; even in that year’s landmark parliamentary race, just more than half of registered voters turned out—and 17 percent of those reportedly cast blank protest ballots. Moroccan officials express a near-universal concern that voters will show up this time in embarrassingly small numbers.

Okay, it would be great if more people voted in elections, but according to the
International Herald Tribune over 69% of Moroccans plan on voting in the upcoming
election. I guess we here in the USA should also be embarrassed of our small numbers. Even if Morocco votes at the 50% rate of 2002, that is just shy of the turnout of US presidential elections and far more than any recent non-presidential US federal election.

There’s a good reason why Moroccan citizens keep their distance from their political system. Complicated electoral laws ensure that parliamentary seats are fairly evenly distributed, regardless of who wins the largest share of the national vote, and parliamentary powers are so overshadowed by the king’s own legislative authority that most members of parliament (with the notable exception of the Islamist opposition) don’t even bother to show up when the body is in session. Instead, some use their parliamentary status and the legal immunity it grants them to advance their own narrow interests and sometimes to cover criminal activity. In this environment, the most rational Moroccan voters may well be those who give their ballot endorsements in direct exchange for the cash or food some candidates all but openly offer.

If we take a deep breath, aside from the King part and outright vote buying is this that much different from our very own gerrymandered (see above) special interest ridden Congress? Perhaps our attendance rates are a tad higher. Sometimes. I am sure
that if there were villages in the US as poor as Morocco today vote buying would common.

It was not that long ago that such election fraud was all too common here.

All that being said, please forgive the rant, the article does outline the classic crux of the bumps in the road to democracy, especially when many political parties are based on religious or ethnic affiliation. As the author writes:

The king’s difficult choices suggest there are limits to Washington’s preferred strategy for democratic progress in the Arab world: a top-down, gradual process guided by a reliably friendly but reform-minded autocrat. Erecting the forms of democracy without much substance, a balance now well-developed in Morocco, may not ultimately win the loyalty of Arab citizens. And if democratic forms lose legitimacy, then tightly managed liberalization, far from ensuring stability in a dangerous environment, may end up pushing Arab societies away from peaceful politics altogether and further into the arms of extremists. That’s a kind of voting with one’s feet that we should work to avoid.

Related posts:

1. Push To Try Israeli War Criminal In Morocco
2. Surprise, Surprise: Mubarak Wins
3. Kuwait Election Post Mortem
4. Israel to Disenfranchise East Jerusalem Palestinians
5. More than 2 sides