IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES:

Morocco's march to democracy rests on king's whim (Neil Macfarquhar, 10/01/05, The New York Times)

[M]orocco has moved further along the reform road than any of its Arab neighbors. Its press is vibrant and outspoken. An 18-month-old family law no longer treats women as male chattel. Voluntary organizations can be formed with relative ease, and scores of them work on everything from improving prison conditions to raising the country's abysmal illiteracy rate.

Yet that entire system of law rests not on a framework of checks and balances but on the whim of the king. Morocco's constitution declares the king both sacred and the "prince of the faithful." Other Arab constitutions do not declare the ruler holy, but an official reverence cocoons virtually every president or monarch in the region. Anyone who challenges the ruler does so at his own peril.

It is a fact that raises a central question here and across the Middle East: What is needed to turn states of despotic whim into genuine nations of law? In Morocco, an essential first step, many reformers believe, is an open reckoning with the abuses that this system spawned in the past. That effort shows the profound limits that real reform faces in even the most forward looking Arab nations.

A few months ago, Marzouki took the extraordinary step of testifying at a public forum about the misery he endured in Tazmamart, whose name has become a catchphrase for the abuses Moroccans suffered under the 38-year rule of the late King Hassan II.

But Marzouki chose not to testify before the official Equity and Reconciliation Commission, established last year by the young king, Mohammed VI, to lay bare what Moroccans often call the terror of his father's rule and to establish reparations for about 13,000 victims.

The commission's public hearings, which started in December, are without precedent in the Middle East. Royal advisers point to them as evidence of how far along Morocco is on the road to democratic transformation.

Yet to many abused prisoners like Marzouki, the commission hearings have proved inadequate.

You needn't satisfy the victims, just the rest of the country.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 30, 2005 11:49 PM