The constitution is a feeble attempt to camouflage the absolute power of the monarchy taking into account two essential considerations:
1. Hassan II's imperialist allies (in particular France and the United States) want to see the situation in Morocco stabilized to safeguard their interests there. They 19 have therefore insisted that the sovereign
MOROCCO show more flexibility over "respect for human rights and the spread of democracy".
2. The sharp worsening of the situation of the oppressed masses, which has expressed itself in several uprisings since the start of the 80s, with periodic explosions (1981, 1984, 1990).
The new constitution in fact simply sets down in black and white the reality of the autocracy and is in no way significantly different to its predecessors, either in the way it was worked out - which the monarch did not explain - or its content which puts no limit on the king's absolute power (see box).
### Liberal hopes dashed
This new constitution was a great disappointment to the liberal opposition; their repeated appeals that it should be prepared through a "national dialogue and compromise" between itself and the palace went unheard and only faint traces of its requests can be found in the constitution. Also disappointed were Amazigh [Berber] intellectuals who have several times asked for their language to become an official language alongside Arab.
This constitution follows in the footsteps of its predecessors in enshrining the "equality of men and women" in terms of their political rights. However, the king wanted to dissuade women from demanding a reform of the Personal Code (the Muduwan)! during the referendum and elections, by keeping to himself the sole right to deal with this question as one of his prerogatives as "commander of the faithful" and raising the spectre of a fundamentalist reaction.
The only novelties in the constitution are some pseudo-concessions aimed at buying off the moderate opposition and mystifying the discontented. For example, 20 PLANILe International Viewpoint # 238 we read that the prime minister is able to propose government members to the king... who will appoint them if this seems right to him. Parliament is not automatically dissolved by a state of emergency... but the king has an absolute right to dissolve it if he wishes simply by issuing a dahir (royal decree).
The constitution creates two councils: the constitutional council appointed by the king and the economic and social council without legislative powers. The commissions of inquiry allowed for by the constitution have been robbed in advance of any effectiveness.
The reticence of the masses and the lack of enthusiasm of the liberal opposition led the interior ministry and the reactionary parties that revolve around it to declare a general mobilization. Using all the means at their disposal they tried to make people feel the importance of the new constitution, appealing for them to turn out and vote "yes".
Interior ministry campaign
The interior minister (which is also the ministry of information) was thus able to use the radio and television to conduct a campaign for a "yes" in collaboration with his henchmen in the ministry, French citizens in its pay and even some intellectuals from the liberal opposition at conferences aimed at explaining the advantages of this constitution.
The interior ministry also organized the production of millions of leaflets and posters plastered all over the country and commandeered facilities for the reactionary parties.2
At the same time, the ministry cracked down on activities by the liberal opposition - Istiqlal, Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP), Organization of Democratic and Popular Action (OADP) and unions such as the General Union of Moroccan Workers (UGTM) and the Democratic Confederation of Labour (CDT).3 Meetings were banned, offices shut and activists detained for supporting non-participation in the referendum.
A week after the king's speech these parties decided together to call for "nonparticipation", a position which does not wholly reflect the feelings of their supporters. Tendencies favourable to ratification were apparent notably in the USFP, in its press and in the report by its general secretary to the party's central committee on August 28, 1992. This "responsible" opposition did not hide its satisfaction over the sovereign's charity and has declared its willingness to participate in the forthcoming elections.
The reason for "non-participation" was the manner in which the constitution had been worked out - which amounted to a flat rejection of the liberal opposition's appeals for a "national dialogue". 4
This was a heavy blow to the liberals who in 1989 accepted a prolongation of two years of the life of the existing parliament in return for a royal promise of a "return to the democratic experience" Months of waiting convinced the opposition that they had been deceived and their parliamentary teams undertook a joint campaign, putting forward a motion of censure in May 1990.5
The only mass action of the campaign was the general strike of December 14, 1990 organized through the CDT and UGTM by which they hoped to show the palace their ability to make a noise.
### Back to begging
However the ferocity of the repression they met brought the opposition back to their senses and to their habitual begging. Between October 1991 and June 1992 they sent the king six letters concentrating on the following points:
1. An amendment to the constitution to give full powers to the Chamber of Deputies in matters of legislation and inspection.
2. For the representative institutions to have the means to carry out their tasks.
3. A government appointed by parliament and responsible to it.
4. Free elections and to this end:
• A neutral commission to oversee them;
• A revision of electoral laws and lists;
• The right to vote at 18;
• The right to be a candidate at 21.
5. Respect for human rights, a general amnesty and an end to the control over political life exercised by the interior ministry.
6. Meeting union demands.
The palace did not deign to reply, undertaking "democratization" according to its own lights. Nothing remained to the libe1. The Union of Women's Action sought signatures for petitions calling for: • The banning of polygamy. • Divorce. • An end to masculine rule over women, whether by the father or husband This petition met with a violent reaction from the fundamentalist press which published fatwas (religious edicts) against supporters of women's emancipation. 2. A further six right wing parties and a part of the fundamentalist movement called for a vote for the new constitution. 3. With an eye on their rank-and-file, the union leaderships called for non-participation but they did little to mobilize support for this position. 4. Editorial in the USFP's journal of September 3, 1992. 5. The parliamentary opposition did not imagine it could overthrow the regime, but it hoped to influence public opinion and give itself a popular appeal. 6. This movement was crushed by the interior ministry and army with a loss of 600 lives in the poor neighbourhoods of Fez and Tangiers and long prison sentences for those arrested.
November 9, 1992
MOROCCO
The leading role of the king — highlights of the new Moroccan constitution Article 19: The king, Amir al-Muminin, supreme representative of the nation, symbol of its unity, guarantor of the durability and continuity of the state, dedicated to the respect of Islam and the constitution. He guarantees the independence of the nation and the the territorial integrity of the realm in its authentic frontiers.
Article 23: The person of the king is inviolable and sacred.
Article 24: The king nominates the prime minister.
Article 25: The king presides over the council of ministers.
Article 27: The king can dissolve the chamber of representatives by decree...
Article 28: The content of [his] messages can not be the object of debate.
Article 30: The king is the supreme head of the royal armed forces.
Article 31: The king accredits ambassadors...
Article 32: The king presides over the higher council of magistrates, the higher council of education and the higher council of national social advancement.
Article 33: The king nominates the magistrates...
Article 34: The king exercises the right of pardon.
Article 35: ... the king can... proclaim an state of emergency by decree.
Article 37: No member of the chamber of representatives can be prosecuted or pursued, arrested or judged for their opinions... except where such opinions challenge the monarchical regime, the Muslim religion or constitute an act of disrespect for the king.
Article 66: The king can ask the chamber of representatives to undertake a new reading of any draft law.
Article 67: After such a reading the king can, by decree, put any such proposed law to a referendum.
Article 77: [After the dissolution of the chamber] the king exercises, above and beyond the powers granted to him by this constitution, the powers of the chamber of representatives.
Article 97: The initiative for the revision of the constitution belongs to the king.
Article 100: The monarchical character of the state and dispositions relative to the Muslim religion cannot be the object of a
In reality the interior ministry had its work cut out to get the required result.
• In the villages the usual methods were used to get the peasants masses, who have no experience of organization, out to vote.
• Rumours were circulated that those who did not take part would lose rooms and services.
• Bosses in public and private sectors told their employees to vote.
• Interior ministry agents patrolled the neighbourhoods urging the inhabitants to vote.
However such means - and the fact that the army and police forces could also vote — are still not enough to explain the fantastic figures released by the interior ministry. More direct fraud was certainly used.
• Before the voting began ballot boxes were stuffed with "yes" votes.
• The same people voted several times, this being made possible by the manipulation of electoral lists and the distribution of voting cards.
• Proxy voting for members of families in the villages and by an employer for their workforce in the towns.
• Many polling stations did not have any "no" voting slips.
• The lack of any independent supervision to ensure neutrality in the conduct of the referendum meant that the interior ministry could engage in wholesale rewriting of the returns after the voting.
Hassan II hopes that this victory will show his imperialist allies that he is the only guarantee of stability without any concession to democratic norms he has constitutional revision. * ral opposition but to return to its old methods of begging and horse-trading.
The great bulk of the population, ground down by absolutist rule and poverty remained outside the "constitutional" agitation. Owing to lack of political education the most developed parts of the masses remain under the influence of the liberal opposition.
Despite their weakness, democratic currents on the whole adopted a correct attitude. They called for a boycott of the referendum and for the election of a constituent assembly. This is shown by the communiqué signed by 26 former political prisoners which points out that the constitution has been decree from above and that the amendments are "partial and do not change the nature of the absolutist power". They also point out the absence of any guarantee of fairness in the procedures for holding referenda.?
this was also the line taken by the PADS (which came out of the USFP in 1983)
which also called for a boycott but is demanding a very special type of constituent assembly that would oversee "the formation of a coalition government that would oversee the election of a constituent assembly" 8
The results that were published in the night of September 4 were no surprise. They are in the grand tradition of frauds imposed on the Moroccan people over the past 30 years. 97.29% of the 11.8 million registered voters had taken part of which 99.96% had voted "yes".
To any who raised their eyebrows the interior ministry explained: the Moroccan people have shown their approval of the man who built the infernal prison of Tazmamart, the cemetery of Kenitra and the grand mosque of Casablanca, and is responsible for the war in the Sahara. They are in near unanimous agreement with the absolute ruler of their country, where ten million people live in poverty and 11 mil lion are illiterate.
successfully carried out a massive fraud, without any protests by the liberal opposition and the population as a whole.
Indeed he can take comfort in the attitude of the liberal opposition which has continued its decades long practice of begging and running about the palace corridors looking for a deal, while holding back direct struggle by the masses. This latest comedy has shown the utter futility of these methods.
### Constituent assembly
Only the class struggle of the disinherited masses can win political freedom. The revolutionary circles must become the instrument of this struggle alongside the oppressed and resolutely take up all the basic democratic demands, in the first place the demand for a constituent assembly. * 7. This communiqué appeared in the journal Elufuq of August 30, 1992. 8. Communiqué of the central committee of the 21 Party of the Democratic and Socialist Vanguard (PADS) of July 18, 1992..
November 9, 1992
SOMALIA
A catastrophe that needn't have been
THE overthrow of the regime of General Mohamed Siyad
Barre in January 1991, after three years of civil war, went almost unnoticed by a world polarized by the Gulf crisis.
More recently, fighting has shaken the capital Mogadishu, where two Hawiyé clans have been fighting over the remains of a moribund state against the backdrop of the spectre of hunger.
These events also failed to make an impact on governments and public opinion more preoccupied by the war in Yugoslavia - a conflict that UN General Secretary
Boutros Boutros-Ghali has dubbed "a rich man's war"
However, since last July, there has been a certain clearing of the decks as governments and the United Nations have finally decided to follow the lead of several nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) who have been working tirelessly to stem the tide of a situation that has continued to worsen.
the Republic of Somalia. 4
From the time of independence, the irredentism of the Mogadishu authorities has constituted its central political thrust. The five points of the star emblazoned against a blue background on the Somali flag symbolize greater Somalia including Somaliland and the ex-Italian Somalia (reintegrated in 1960 into the Republic of Somalia), Djibouti, Ogaden and north east Kenya. Since 1964 Somalis and Ethiopians have clashed over lines of demarcation that had never been negotiated, each supported by guerilla movements operating along the border. While Somalia benefitted from the ethnic identity of the Ogadeni, Ethiopia benefitted from the tribal cleavages in Somalia. These clashes reached a high point in the Ogaden war of 1977-1988. The Somali aggression at a time when the revolutionary regime of Addis Ababa had to confront an offensive on the Eritrean and Tigrean fronts, provoked a turnaround on the part of the Soviets who massively supplied Ethiopia with enough arms and troops to allow it to repulse the Somalis.
The 1978 defeat of Ogaden forced the
Somalis to focus on internal problems and clan politics masked under the term "pan-Somalism" were not long in coming to the fore. For ten years, head of state and clan leader, Darod Marehan, successfully manoeuvred by taking advantage of the divisions within the opposition. But it is important to reflect upon the meaning of the struggle led by Mohamed Abdillé Hassan. Today, it is convenient to highlight the antagonism between Issak and Darod. In fact, throughout the war which pitted the English colonial troops against the "Mad Mullah's" henchmen, the role of the Issags who fought side by side with the British in order to guarantee the integrity of their pastoral spaces was not negligible.
From the beginning of the 1980s, the Syad Barré regime had to confront the Mijirtein rebellion, one of the three branches of the Darod tribes that were regrouped within the Somali Democratic Front of Salvation (SDFS). Danger was avoided thanks to the crushing superiority of the Somali army and the relative isolation of the Mijirtein, who were implanted in the extreme notheast of the country. On the other hand, the Issag dissidents of the 1. According to US press reports, the cost of a peace-keeping force in Somalia is considered to high ($7.5bn), keeping in mind priority commitments in Yugoslavia and Cambodia, leave alone aid put aside for Russia. International Herald Tribune, April 29 and May 13, 1992. 2. Stephen Smith, "Coup de barre chez les Somaliens". ', Libération, August 4, 1989. 3. Most 19th century travellers speak of their encounters with sturdy nomadic peoples armed with spears and swords. 4. Pierre Rondot, "Quelques remarques sur le personage et le rôle historique de Mohammed Abdillé Hassan", Bulletin de la société d'études d'Afrique Orientale, number 8, 1970.
FRANCOIS PIGUET E IGHT years after Ethiopia and the Sudan, western public opinion has again been treated to the shocking images of famine and and its counterpart, children suffering from extreme malnutrition. However, the economic crisis and the plethora of conflicts on the periphery of the industrialized world - Yugoslavia and the Middle East, not to mention the different republics of the ex-Soviet Union, has prevented a mobilization comparable to that of 19841985. In any event, the situation calls for the use of unprecedented measures, including the dispatch of UN troops to guarantee the safety of food conveys.!
Fighting spreads southward
The clashes in Mogadishu which have continued for nearly two years, have already claimed several tens of thousands of victims. The fighting has spread throughout the south of the country as well as to pockets in the north, in Somaliland and Mijirtein. "Tribal anarchy is paradoxically already a reality in one of the rare countries in Africa that is unified by a single culture and a common language."2 This was written in 1989. The fighting has not stopped increasing and spreading since that time.
How could a country situated between the rich Gulf emirates and Africa, in a stra22 tegic zone that was an important region sought after by the great powers reach such a degree of desolation with such indifference?