Why I Will Not Vote on Nov. 25?

By Jamal Elabiad

Like many Moroccans, I will boycott the upcoming Moroccan legislative elections which were scheduled for November 25.  Many reasons lie behind my decision, the most important of which are the focal point of this article.

Nothing has been changed as far as the measures Moroccan political parties rely on in order to choose the candidates that will represent them around Morocco. At the city where I have been working for seven years, the candidate a Moroccan socialist party selected is a rich businessman who is notorious in the city for graft and electoral fraud. 

He managed to win the previous elections due to the bribes and false promises he gave to the electorate, but not to the fact that he was, for them, the right candidate to speak on their behalf in the parliament. The electorate are not to blame simply because most of them are poor and illiterate.

I am quite sure that the party leaders fielded him though they know everything about his past electoral fraud. One reason behind that is that he has all the means that will help him win easily the upcoming elections, including money.  Money, by the way, is a key factor for a candidate to win the elections in Morocco. I am also quite sure that the city where I am working is not an exception when it comes to the fact that one needs to be well-off in order to be selected by Moroccan political parties as a candidate in the legislative elections. 

Not only did the socialist party leaders know everything about the candidate’s past electoral fraud, but the ministry of interior as well.  However, both of them did not reject his application despite the fact that his CV is dirty with electoral fraud. The reason why the ministry of interior did not too prevent that businessman from running in the upcoming general elections was the fact that he is the type of candidates that are ready to do what the ministry of interior wants them to do, not what those who voted for them want them to.

My point is that the ministry of interior in Morocco is known for its role in rigging the elections results.  I know that the ministry of interior did prevent many people from running for the elections, but this is just to have Moroccans believe that the ministry is against electoral fraud. In brief, I decided to boycott the upcoming Nov. 25 parliamentary elections due in part to the fact that the ministry of interior has been accused since independence of rigging the elections.

While I was writing this article, a Facebook friend told me that the ministry of interior banned many people from running in the coming legislative elections, including the candidate in question.  The ministry of interior, for me, did only half of the job when it did not bring their political parties to court and accuse them of encouraging electoral fraud through selecting on purpose only people who were guilty of vote-buying.

The minister of interior is another reason why I will boycott the legislative elections. He is among the ministers in Morocco that are not elected, but appointed by the king.  I will not vote simply because the revised constitution was not clear on whether there will be some ministers in the new government that will be appointed by the king. That means one of the basic demands of Moroccan pro-democracy protesters still has been fulfilled:  a king that reigns, but doesn’t rule.  Think of the fact that the prime minister still cannot dissolve the Cabinet without the king’s consent, and the fact that the king can delegate the chairmanship of the council of ministers to the prime minister but the latter can only operate within the confines of agendas set by the king!

Why I Wanted Ghaddafi Alive?

By Jamal Elabiad

“Ghaddafi could have chosen a different ending.” wrote a New York Times’ editor.

I expected that Muammar Ghaddafi would have a terrible ending when he ignored all his allies’ offers on how to step down, but I it never came to mind that Muammar Ghaddafi would be captured and shot to death by the rebels.

My expectation of Ghaddafi’s ending was that he would be arrested and handed over to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the crimes he committed against the Libyans.  There are many reasons why I was one of those who wanted him alive, not dead. The most important one was that Muammar Ghaddafi, if he had not been murdered, would have revealed during a trail before the ICC a lot of secrets about many Western presidents and ministers, including Nicolas Sarkozy, Golden Brown, and Tony Blair. 

Moreover, Muammar Ghaddafi would have unveiled many truths about the Libyan opposition simply because many of its members had served him faithfully for a long time.  And the least we could have known from Muammar Ghaddafi’s trial was the story of the photo album that was found in his abandoned Tripoli compound, and that was filled with images of Condoleezza Rice, a former American secretary of state!

I do add my voice to many Arab and Western columnists who attributed the killing of Muammar Ghaddafi to the fact that if he hadn’t been killed, his trial would have led to the fall of many western leaders and members of the Libyan opposition. Ghaddafi’s trial, in brief, could have marked the start of the fall of those who were once close friends of Muammar Ghaddafi. Possibly, this is one of the many endings the New York Times’ editor had in mind when he wrote: “Ghaddafi could have chosen a different ending.”