Washington  / Morocco Board News     While calm has returned to the streets in Algerian, Tunisia continues it descends into chaos.  If Algiers and Tunis were rocked with unprecedented violence and mayhem, Morocco has stayed relatively calm. International observers are contemplating the reasons behind the Moroccan “exception”. Although Morocco was spared the social unrests that have plagued Algeria and continue to spread in Tunis, the Kingdom is not immune from such socio-political turbulence.

Unlike its neighbors, the Moroccan government has been attentive to the grievances of sections of its youth population. Even though successive Moroccan governments were unable to resolve the nagging crisis of unemployment and underemployment of young university graduates, Moroccan officials have come up with several ideas to address the problem, albeit with limited success. On the other hand, Algeria with its wealth had poured billions of dollars on obsolete social and economical programs that had no successes and made little headways in resolving the unemployment crisis. In Tunisia, the Ben Ali government invested heavily in the tourism industry in the coastal regions and parts of the Tunisian Sahara, creating a widely disproportioned regional growth policy that creates low paying jobs not fit for the highly educated Tunisian youth.

While classism is a major source of social frictions in the three North African countries, Morocco’s open entrepreneurial atmosphere succeeded in creating a low middle class pushing more and more Moroccans out of poverty. Since Morocco has a larger portion of its population, compared to Algeria and Tunisia, living below the poverty level, Moroccan officials have “tolerated” the existence of a “parallel economy” that employs large segments of the poor. These “underground economic activities” have been the lifeline for millions of Moroccans, some of them are young and educated. The Moroccan treasury considers the loss of billions of Dirhams form tax evasions on the undeclared revenues as a price for the social peace that comes with appeasing some of the population. Ironically, it was the Tunisian and Algerian governments’ decision to crack down on informal markets that led to the riots in both countries.

However, it is Morocco’s liberal economic polices and the flexibility of its fiscal and tax laws that helped Morocco escape some of the social malaises currently tormenting the Algerian and Tunisian officials.

While Morocco continues to adopt and change its monetary policies to meet the demands of the international markets and attract direct foreign investments, Tunisia did not evolve in this sense and Algeria regressed. Just in the past year, Algerian passed several laws making it harder for international multinationals to invest in the country while Tunisia continues to force foreign companies to co-invest with locals in order to set up shop.

If Morocco’ financial flexibility and economic suppleness had attracted several major investors who continue to employ the local population, true judicial reform is a sorely missing piece that may halt this progress.

Moroccan human rights advocates argue that some of the current investment and programs do not reach the very poor and the marginalized. Union activists have long complained about the rampant petty corruption in the Moroccan bureaucracy and its impact on the public’s perception of the “authorities”.  Nepotism and favoritism are also a source of complains leveled by the public against Moroccan officials.

If the economic conditions have set off riots in Algeria and Tunisia, the lack of democracy and individual freedoms coupled with the political marginalization of the youth are major factors behind the crises in Algeria and Tunisia.  It is time for the leadership in the North African countries to show the world that “Arab” societies are not immune to democracy and political freedoms. Never the less, if no serious and meaningful government actions are taken to engage the young and as the region has learned from Sidi Bouzid in Tunisia and Oran in Algeria, it takes a small and an insignificant act to start a large revolt with unpredictable consequences.
 

Author:
Hassan Masiky

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