Thousands attend Morocco May Day rallies, demand jobs

Thousands took to the streets of Rabat and Casablanca on Wednesday demanding jobs and higher pay during May Day demonstrations marked by tension, with a large security contingent deployed in the capital.

Scuffles broke out as the demonstrators passed the parliament building, with riot police beating up and wounding some of the protesters.Several thousand people marched up Rabat's central boulevard around midday, waving Moroccan and Berber flags, holding placards and chanting slogans, some of them strongly critical of the government.

"The people want the fall of the government!" shouted one group of unionists.

The workers union affiliated to the ruling Islamist Party of Justice and Development (PJD) called for an end to corruption and proclaimed its support for King Mohamed VI and Morocco's ownership of the disputed Western Sahara.

More than 10,000 people also marched in Casablanca, Morocco's largest city and economic capital, an AFP journalist reported.

Many of those participating in Wednesday's demonstrations were unemployed graduates, or public sector employees demanding better working conditions.

"When the PJD came to power, they said they'd find a solution to the job crisis. But they've done nothing to help us," said Mohamed Abdelmoneim, 27, who has been out of work since graduating last year.

For Abdelhamid Amine, a member of the UMT, one of Morocco's largest unions, the demonstration was "a success for the working class and a repudiation of the government, which has made too many promises."

Morocco is grappling with an economic crisis linked to the problems in Europe, its top trade partner, amid widespread poverty, rising prices and youth unemployment estimated to be as high as 30 percent, which causes near-daily protests in the capital.

Faced with a budget deficit last year that reached 7 percent of GDP, the government is attempting to push through delicate reforms, including on costly pensions and subsidies that it can no longer afford.

A round of talks at the weekend between Morocco's main unions and the government were cancelled after several unions pulled out, raising political tensions ahead of the May Day rallies.

Thousands of people attended a protest in Rabat one month ago, called by union leaders, to protest against unemployment and the high cost of living, and denounce corruption, which the PJD vowed to eradicate in its election campaign but which remains endemic.

Morocco activists outraged over Israeli dates imported for Ramadan

A group of Moroccan activists voiced their objections over the way Israeli dates have invaded local markets and became part of Ramadan meals in what they termed as a call for normalization with the Jewish state.

Activists called upon vendors to boycott all Israeli products and expose those who export them and demanded that the Islamist government issues a law that criminalizes all actions that promote normalization.

Several types of dates have recently invaded Moroccan local markets in packages that have the addresses and phone numbers of the factories that produced them in Israel.

Human rights activist Khaled al-Soufiyani, coordinator of the National Action Group for Solidarity with Palestine and Iraq, complained of the insensitivity of allowing Israeli dates to be sold in Moroccan markets.

“Buying and consuming those dates are an insult to the feelings of Moroccans, most of whom reject normalization with Israel, and a support of Israeli occupation,” he said.

Soufiyani added that trading in Israeli dates and eating them in Ramadan also belittle the Palestinian struggle and make the blood they spill in vain.

Israeli dates, which reach Morocco via Europe, compete with dates imported from Tunisia, Algeria, the UAE, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. Those dates are imported under the pretext that the current supply is not enough for local consumption especially with the high demand in the holy month of Ramadan.

Ahmed al-Raysouni, supervisor of the Islamic Jurisprudence Complex in Jeddah, has issued an earlier fatwa prohibiting dealing with dates imported from Israel.

“It is prohibited to sell, buy, import or export dates from Israel,” Raysouni said.

Mohamed Banjelon Andalusi, head of the Moroccan Association for Solidarity with the Palestinian Struggle, expressed his outrage at the spread of Israeli dates in Moroccan markets.

“In the past, Israeli dates used to enter Moroccan markets under fake names for camouflage, but now it is done in the most blatant manner,” he said.

For Andalusi, having the names of Israeli factories on date packages is indicative of increasing tendency for normalization with the Jewish state on the part of the Moroccan government.

Andalusi added that his association had sent earlier a letter to the government calling for the criminalization of all sorts of normalization including trade.

“We have not received a response and what is happening on the ground shows that our demands are being totally overlooked,” he said.

A year on, Morocco's democracy movement founders

RABAT, Morocco (AP) -- Morocco's pro-democracy February 20 movement spearheaded the country's version of the Arab Spring and sent the centuries-old monarchy scrambling to reform. Now, a year after its birth, the youth-led group appears to have lost its way.

And while the movement struggles for relevance, Morocco's problems are far from solved: Social discontent and clashes between police and unemployed graduates are on the rise as the economy suffers from the effects of Europe's financial crisis.

Like the Occupy movements in the United States, Morocco's pro-democracy groups now need to find out if they can keep the fight going.

On Sunday, the movement will try with countrywide anniversary demonstrations to rekindle some of the fire that at its peak in March put 800,000 people from all walks of life on the streets calling for an end to corruption, greater democracy and social justice.

The protesters shook the cities of Morocco and achieved some of the things they wanted, bringing their country a new constitution and free elections.

Since that time, however, the numbers at the weekly demonstrations have plummeted to a few thousand in the larger cities as ordinary people abandoned the movement, apparently satisfied with King Mohammed VI's reforms, including granting more powers to elected officials - or scared away by a tougher response to the protests.

Elections on Nov. 25 were won by a moderate Islamist opposition party promising many of the things once shouted at demonstrations.

Moroccan authorities have trumpeted their "third way" of dealing with the Arab Spring, steering between revolution and repression in favor of reforms with stability. Social unrest has continued though, including violent clashes between police and unemployed graduates calling for government sector jobs.

The youth-led movement has had a hard time harnessing that simmering anger.

"The problem with February 20 is that it is elitist and doesn't have a rapport with the people," said Mouad Belghouat, a 25-year-old rapper with February 20 whose songs excoriating the palace and social inequalities in the country became the soundtrack for the movement. The movement's demands weren't all realized, he said, "so we continue to go into the streets."

Belghouat, who goes by the named El-Haqed, or the Enraged, was jailed for four months for getting into a fight with a regime supporter in the gritty, low income suburb of Casablanca where he lives. His supporters say the charges were trumped up.

"You can't talk to people about parliamentary monarchy, they think the king is sacred, so you have to talk to them about unemployment and those stealing the wealth of the country," he said, explaining that he and his friends in the movement now go to neighborhoods and have discussions to raise people's consciousness.

It also helps that his rap songs appeal to the young, unemployed and disenfranchised youth that swell the crumbling slums surrounding Casablanca, Tangiers and other large cities.

The movement's protests always had an artistic side to them, with street theater often accompanying the colorful marches through the streets.

In one Casablanca protest, a man with the mask of a hated adviser of the king dangled a baguette on a fishing rod above the grasping hands of three ragged figures representing the people.

There is no denying that in the initial months of the protests, February 20 achieved more than generations of party politics had accomplished in opening up Morocco.

"It succeeded in breaking a taboo, it brought out into the open calls against corruption and the domination of certain figures on the economy," said Omar Bendoro, a political analyst at Rabat University. Close associates of the king from wealthy families are perceived to dominate the economy.

After years of repression, people are no longer afraid to make their discontent known, whether about lack of water, electricity or civil rights, he added.

"Social problems have always existed, but now the people explode because there is a chance that the powers-that-be will take them seriously," Bendoro said.

The king, due either to the street rallies or fears of Egyptian- or Tunisian-style revolutions, agreed in March to amend the constitution, bowing to longtime demands from political parties.

Under the new constitution the prime minister has more powers and comes from the party that won the most votes, rather than whomever the king felt like choosing under the old system. Ultimate power, however, still rests with the monarch and his court of close advisers.

Even as the concessions, including raising public sector wages, blunted popular anger, activists say there was a second, darker, prong to the official response - one that targeted the movement itself.

Starting in May, demonstrations began to be attacked by riot police and hired thugs, and some activists started receiving late night visits from security officers.

"There were two levels at work, the institutional and the non-institutional, which was the intimidation, beatings and propaganda - particularly propaganda about the Islamists," said activist Abadila Maaelaynine.

State media said the demonstrators were being infiltrated by radical communists and hardline Islamists from the banned Adl wal Ihsane (Justice and Charity) movement, which did have a big presence in the demonstrations.

The accusations stuck, further cooling public ardor for the movement, and soon the demonstrations became more of a weekly - later monthly - traffic nuisance than a real vehicle of political change.

"We failed to become more innovative in what we were doing and it's time to admit that," said Zeinab Belmkaddem, a young activist with the movement, which is now looking to start a political party and build up a lasting network tied to the people.

"We don't want to just stay in the streets, we tried that for a year - been there done that - that's it, but at the end of the day what happened is that others took advantage and that's what happened with the PJD," she said bitterly, referring to the Islamist party that won elections.

The party has been a clear beneficiary of the movement.

"The process of democratization in the country is moving in a good direction," said Mustapha Khalfi, once the editor of the PJD's newspaper and now the minister of communication and government spokesman. "Moroccan society has the feeling that what is happening in politics has an impact on daily life and most importantly when they participate it can make a difference."

Khalfi is quick to praise the February 20 movement for its early efforts, but noted that it has since lost momentum and popularity and it is the new government that is now looking to satisfy people's demands for jobs.

Activists, however, question whether the limited powers given to the new government will be enough to enact the deep reforms that the people crave - especially as daily frustrations mount.

"Now the people are waiting to see what they can do," said the rapper Belghouat. "They will be disappointed."

Thousands march in Casablanca for political change

Several thousand people took to the streets of Casablanca Sunday to press for deeper political reforms, saying recent changes did not go far enough.

The protesters, mobilizing on a call from the so-called Feb. 20 pro-democracy movement, held their first demonstration without the Islamist Justice and Charity group.

The group withdrew from the Feb. 20 movement earlier this month, claiming it had been the object of “attacks” from youths within the movement.

Up to 5,000 people demonstrated in Casablanca’s poor Hay Mohammadi suburb, an AFP journalist witnessed, while police said about 3,500 people in total protested countrywide.

“We are here to say that the fight will continue despite the withdrawal of political organizations, Islamic or otherwise,” protester Hamza Mahfoud told AFP.

“Our demands are legitimate and they have not changed: a parliamentary monarchy and more social justice,” said Mahfoud.

About 300 to 500 people took part in a similar protest in Rabat.

Earlier this month, the Feb. 20 movement said it was willing to talk with the newly elected Islamist head of government under conditions that included the release of political prisoners, a guarantee of press freedom and more individual liberties.

The Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD) won elections in November which the protest movement boycotted.

Unlike the overthrow of governments in Tunisia and Egypt, Morocco’s king nipped swelling protests in the bud by offering constitutional reforms that curbed his near absolute powers.

For the mostly young protesters who began to march in February giving the movement its name, the reforms were not enough, but the movement has lost some momentum since the elections.

Moroccan Islamist party chief ready for coalition government

The head of Morocco's moderate Islamists said Saturday he wanted a coalition government to promote democracy and good governance after his party claimed victory in parliamentary polls.

"The nub of our programme and of those who will govern with us will have a double axis, democracy and good governance," Abdellah Benkirane told the France 24 television channel.

"Today what I can promise Moroccans is that I am going to try, I and the team which will work with me, to be more serious and more rational," the leader of the Justice and Development Party (PJD) said.

A month after Islamists won Tunisia's post-revolution election and days before their predicted surge in Egyptian polls, their Moroccan counterparts claimed to have achieved a similar breakthrough without bloodshed.

With official results expected Sunday, PJD parliamentary bloc leader Lahcen Daoudi predicted the party would have more than 100 of the 395 seats in the assembly.

Under the new constitution, if the predicted results are confirmed, King Mohammed VI will have to name a prime minister from the PJD.

Benkirane acknowledged that his party would have to tailor its programme to appease its coalition partners and the international community on whose investment and tourism the country relies heavily.

"As far as alliances are concerned, we are open to everyone, I have always said that," he said.

"From now on, Moroccans will feel that the state is at their service and not the other way about," Benkirane added. "That is very important for us."

In light of the political activism that has been sweeping Morocco since the beginning of the year, and ahead of parliamentary elections, Moroccan youth are launching several online initiatives aimed at effecting change and injecting new blood into what they see as a long stagnant political scene. 

“Changing the political face of our parties and making way for new generations” is the main purpose of one of the virtual initiatives launched by a Moroccan youth group which calls itself the Political Revolution Movement.

According to its page on the social networking website Facebook, this movement calls upon leaders and members of the political bureaus of all parties to resign following their “poor performance” and be replaced with new “efficient” members following the parliamentary elections, scheduled

Morocco's King Mohammed VI called Saturday for parliamentary elections

 Morocco's King Mohammed VI called Saturday for parliamentary elections to be held soon, in his first speech since a July 1 referendum overwhelmingly approved curbing some of his prerogatives.