Moroccan Monarchy Put to the Test
By Nadia Lamlili, published in TelQuel, June 3, 2006. Translated from the original French, which can be found here. Her blog is here.
Constitutional reform is being discussed more and more. Limiting the king’s powers is implicity evoked. But what are we talking about exactly? By examining the mechanisms of other monarchies (British, Belgian, Spanish, Jordanian, Saudi) let’s see if we can appreciate where we are, and what we can hope for.
How many times has the subject of revising the royal powers come up? Ten, twenty, fifty times. And each time, the reformers say that the king’s powers are too absolute. So be it. But have we taken the trouble to examine the royal “zones of intervention,” power by power, and compare them to foreign experiences? What kind of monarchy do we want?
The question is currently growing in importance with the approach of constitutional reform. The political world and civil society want a king who reigns but doesn’t govern, like the parliamentary monarchies of Spain or Great Britain. But no one has gone so far as to establish detailed comparisons of how royalty is practiced in the world, in order to figure out which examples we can draw from to nourish our own reform. “No experience is transferrable, nor can it function as a model to imitate. We can only draw lessons, nothing more,” notes Abdelmoughit Benmassaoud Tredano, professor of law in Rabat. What are those lessons? “All countries that have known a democratic transition have conformed to universal principles, which consist in recognizing the people as the source of power,” states professor Omar Bendourou. “The people have the right,” he continues, “directly or indirectly, to designate the government in charge of determining and conducting the broad policies of the nation, and the right to put a stop to its functioning through free and transparent elections. Universal principles include the separation of powers, the independence of the judiciary, and the placing of the actions of all public powers under the law and under the control of judges. If we want to guarantee the democratization of our nation’s regime, that is the path to choose.”
Universality remains too vague an idea. So let’s look at it more closely. The monarchy has always been criticized for getting too involved in the exercise of executive authority, to the point that the king has a small government of his own, outside the government forseen by the Constitution. This miniature cabinet is represented by commissions that work in specific sectors (the National Initiative for Human Development, among others) independent of the government’s program. The political class wants a strong prime minister chosen by ballot, who is responsable for his program and for cabinet ministers who reflect his ideas. “We need to set up a power sharing arrangement between the executive power of the king and that of the prime minister. The king will only exercise the functions of sovreignty. All political, economic and social management will be left to the government,” proposes law professor Khalid Charkaoui, pointing to France, where the executive powers of the President of the Republic and of the government are clearly delineated.
But how can we imagine such power sharing in the face of the royal wild card called Article 19? Criticized by everyone, this article provides the king with implicit powers. It permits him to intervene wherever he wants and to enact laws on the margins of parliament, at the same time that “he has the possibility of influencing the course of laws at the level of the Council of Ministers,” notes Mostafa Meftah of the Unified Social Party (PSU). That is the problem. Article 19 blurs the lines of the royal prerogative, be it in the executive, legislative or judicial sphere. “This article must recover the symbolic value it had to begin with,” specifies university professor Rkia al-Mossadeq. On reading it, Article 19 seems innocuous: “The King, Commander of the Faithful, supreme representative of the Nation, symbol of its unity, guarantor of the continuity and perpetuity of the State, watches over Islam and the Constitution. He is the protector of the rights and liberties of the citizens, of social groupings and communities. He guarantees the independence of the Nation and the territorial integrity of the Kingdom within its true borders.” In what way is this article dangerous? “It’s a reservoir of implicit powers,” claims al-Mossaadeq.
The ideal situation would be to achieve a strong parliament, which would be the power center and a necessary way-station for all laws, with no royal “shortcuts.” “But watch out. We can’t make the leap directly to foreign models,” warns Mostafa Meftah. “We want a parliamentary monarchy, but not all at once. The king must let go of his powers bit by bit.” After the death of Franco, Spain also had its transition period, where the king had a great deal of power. To the extent that democracy established itself, his powers lessened, until he didn’t have any left. It is important to realize that this progressive letting go of power was desired and wished for by the Spanish monarch. The whole question is to know whether or not Mohammed VI is motivated by the same wish.
In the judicial sphere, everyone agrees on the necessity of establishing a sharper separation between the power of the king and the Supreme Council of the Judiciary, of which he is the president. “This situation currently presents obstacles, by the simple fact that the Justice Minister is the head of the Supreme Council of the Judiciary as the king’s representative, and by the fact that he has power over the various steps in the professional and private lives of judges.” This is the analysis of the network of associatons that tracks serious violations of human rights in Morocco. “As Commander of the Faithful, the king is the Chief Justice,” notes Mostafa Meftah of the PSU. A subtle disctinction: Spain and Great Britain deliver verdicts in the name of the king, but symbolically.
Which brings us back to religious power and its interference in politics in Morocco. “To speak of secular government in the French style would block the debate, because religious feeling runs very deep in Moroccan society,” warns Abdelali Benamour of Alternatives. “The ideal is to manage to keep the spiritual as a source of values and culture. As for the rules governing the functioning of society, that would belong to the political sphere.” Benmassaoud Tredano adds, “The French case doesn’t give us an example to follow because it’s unique, and moreover, the separation only occurred in 1905, after a long and profound movement seeking the autonomy of individuals and groups in relation to all sources of power had already begun to produce its effects.” If secularism in the French style is associated with revolution, that isn’t always the case with Western monarchies. “It is the evolution of democratic rules that reduced the religious influence of the monarch in Belgium,” notes a political scientist. To put it another way, it is up to the political class to apply pressure to enforce those rules, and to be less demagogic in speaking of the “religious frame of reference.”
Is a rupture necessary? “The rupture must originate from within the existing system and not through a crisis or a revolution,” claims Rkia al-Mossadeq. “In the past, democracy was only established in authoritarian and absolutist regimes through rupture, sometimes accompanied by violence. But we mustn’t generalize, considering that many regimes democratized themselves by drawing inspiration from the experiences of the past, and by adopting paths that were clearly different from one another, but related,” claims Omar Bendourou. These consist of preparing the ground for a democratic transition. In the case of certain former communist nations of Eastern Europe, like Poland (”arranged” transition) or Hungary, round tables between the regime and its opposition were a starting point. Other communist nations transformed themselves through violence, like Romania following the execution of Nicolae Ceausescu. “Democratic transition in Morocco is possible if there is the political will to put the country on the road to political and constitutional reforms, which are, moreover, necessary to an economic takeoff,” summarizes Professor Bendourou. Everything has been said. It all depends on the king.