Reform progress in Morocco

Recently we published a critique of the spate of opinion pieces (read it here ) that seemed designed to undermine the substantial reforms that Morocco has embarked on and that have made the country the brightest light in the Arab sphere as far as modernisation is concerned. Thankfully the attacks on Morocco's reforms were not taken too seriously and more responsible newspapers have returnedtro gently encouraging Morocco. The latest pat on the back comes from an editorial the Boston Globe. Here is part of the article with a link to the full story below.

Morocco is not a democracy as we know it, but there are political parties, a Parliament, and elections, and more importantly the country seems firmly on a road to reform. But it will be a race against time. Morocco still has low literacy and high poverty rates. And while it was thought here that the passions and political poisons of the Middle East might not reach this far west to the ''farthest land of the setting sun," as it was known to Arabs in ancient times, the bombings in Casablanca in 2003 by home-grown Islamic militants ended the dream of Moroccan exceptionalism.

America and Europe have a great deal riding on Morocco's success, and both know it. Both are looking at ways to ease trade restrictions and bring Morocco more into a Western economic orbit. Morocco's brand of tolerant, moderate Islam, not at war with modernity, is the West's best hope. And since the king, as a descendant of the Prophet Mohammed, is ''both president and pope here," as one diplomat put it, the best chance for democratic reform will come from the throne.

Ideologues in the Bush administration held that democracy would come to the Middle East as it did in Eastern Europe -- all of a sudden if only obsolete kings, emirs, authoritarian rulers, and traditional societies could be removed in a great collapse similar to that of the Soviet Union. Iraq was to provide the shove for freedom.

But America's intervention in Iraq has only made matters insufferably worse, and its spectacular failure has given radical Islam a boost everywhere. If democracy, stability, and modernity are ever to take hold in this part of the world it will be through the slow and guided progress that Morocco is attempting, not through the radical and naive exhortations of the Bush administration that only make the task of reformers more difficult.

Full story: Reform in Morocco
Our earlier story: Why kick Moroccan Reforms?

Tags: Morocco Fes, Maghreb news