Please organize !
On november 18, 2011, the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) organized a conference in Washington DC titled “Beyond Morocco’s elections: prospects for genuine reform?”, featuring scholars Marina Ottaway, Anouar Boukhars and Ahmed Benchemsi.
In an interview with Morocco Board Service (starting 3:59), Benchemsi insists on the crucial necessity for Feb20 pro-democracy movement to organize, elect leaders and establish an agenda, if it ever wants to prevail over the autocratic regime.
Before that interview, Benchemsi gave a more general address on the forthcoming 2011 elections (video below). Bad point: he didn’t foresee the Islamist party’s electoral foray that ensued. Good point: he was right predicting that whatever the result, the monarchy would remain in command anyway.
Salut Monsieur Benchemsi. Je crois que le problème qui se pose c’est que le 20 feb n’as pas vraiment une idéologique commune à tous ses militants. ça va du nationalisme à l’extrême gauche, donc s’organiser dans un parti, c’est pratiquement impossible.
In the early nineties, the Clinton campaign slogan “It’s the economy, stupid!” proved powerful and instrumental to defeat the incumbent president George H.W. Bush in his bid for reelection. Now, with the help of James Carville’s new book “It’s the middle class, stupid!”, the Obama campaign is trying to gain the edge by getting the votes of an energized middle class. In Morocco, we don’t need a new Constitution, we need a free press — and I don’t mean only newspapers and magazines, but also, and more importantly, radio and TV. The only way to create a conscious public opinion is to have 20 million people or so watching and hearing the same message at the same time, all the time. So let’s start our Moroccan slogan “It’s the TV, stupid!”
Sounds good, but remember that no radio or TV station can operate in Morocco without a government license. Pretty sure they’d discard any audio-visual project that would promote anti-Makhzen views…