Morocco: Shuffling the cards, changing nothing | Critical Analysis |Axisoflogic.com

Morocco holds legislative national, local and regional elections on September 8. The importance of this event in the future of the country is relatively small, since the centers of political decision are beyond the parliament, despite the Moroccan constitution, drafted in 2011. These elections are, however, an interesting excuse to analyze the economic, social, cultural and political situation of this country and this region of the world.

From the point of view of relations of economic and financial domination, Morocco is on the global periphery, as it is in a relationship of dependence with the traditional world economic and financial centers - Europe, the United States and Japan. It is, however, in a phase of transformation into a semi-peripheral country, because while remaining in a relationship of dependence, it is at the same time getting to a point where there are countries that now depend on it. It is, for example, the 5th largest economy on the African continent and the 2nd largest investor in that continent (only after South Africa). Before the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, it had shown economic growth rates of around 4% for over a decade and was immersed in a process of opening up to foreign financial capital, entering fully into the rules of the game that international financial capitalism has reserved for these emerging countries, namely:

free movement of international capital and free foreign access to the country's raw materials.
free placement of the products manufactured with those raw materials back in the central countries.
emergence of partial processes of physical and cultural industrialization, clashing in various ways with their pre-industrial surroundings.
restriction of movement of workers, restrictions to their labor rights, internal and external migration and new ways of social struggle.

The European Union has several free trade agreements with Morocco that close the borders to migrants but open them to products, thanks which European capitalism, especially French and Spanish, has seen a way to expand its domestic markets -and thus save itself in part from the US-China trade war- by setting the nature, direction, and pace of the industrialization process underway in Morocco. For example, France is investing heavily in the modernisation of the trade, transport and communications sectors, especially the road network, with huge projects like the first high-speed railroad line in the whole of the African continent, or like the port of Tanger Med in the Strait of Gibraltar, the largest port project not only in the whole African continent, but also in the whole Mediterranean basin. Gibraltar is only 15 kilometers from Europe and the Mediterranean Sea is the second busiest maritime route on the planet.

As for the, Citröen, Peugeot, Renault and other car companies are boosting the manufacturing and construction sectors, having turned Morocco into the largest automotive producer in the African continent, with huge automotive assembly plants and a cheap production destined to Europe. This creates a growing industrial workforce, which gets increasingly urban and and increasingly technically specialized, for which new environments, especially urban housing and offices, are being created following western constructive developments.

European companies are making a strong investment in the service sector, with an explosion of restaurants, hotels and other tourist-related businesses catering to tourists from Europe, the US, Japan and China. The COVID-19 pandemic just put an unexpected brake on the government intention of having tourism accounting for 20% of the country´s GDP. The real state sector is receiving significant investment flows mainly by UAE and Saudi Arabia. European and American companies are also giving a boost to the energy sector, especially the renewable energy sector, with five super huge facilities in the country for the use of solar energy which join the traditional mining of raw materials, especially phosphates. These renewable energy companies get funding from the European Investment Bank, the Germany Development Bank or Citybank Maghreb, and they don´t aim at making Morocco self-sufficient in terms of energy: Morocco depends almost entirely (90%) on energy imports to meet its energy needs.

Also, when central capitalist countries integrate new territories to their western commercial, industrial and tourist circuits, they also bring along the inclusion in the circuit of international events for new members: the Climate Summit in 2016, the creation of the Strategic Plan for Morocco for 2019-2021 by the World Food Program, the joint annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, or the General Assembly of the World Tourism Organization, both in 2021.

But global capitalism is not interested in the distribution of wealth. Partly inherited from colonial socio-economic structures, and partly reinforced by current foreign investments, territorial inequalities are expanding, with a country at two speeds: the booming industrialized Atlantic coast (Tangier-Tetouan-Rabat-Casablanca-Agadir and to a lesser extent, Marrakech) and the forsaken, non-industrialized and undeveloped rest of the country. These territorial inequalities in turn create pockets of social conflict, the best known being Al Hoceima, where the population has traditionally protested the lack of services, infrastructure and job opportunities, followed by reactions of violent repression to this conflict. The youth outside the Atlantic corridor do not have many opportunities for the future, their unemployment rates being much higher than 26% of the national average unemployment rates for the population between 15 and 24 years old. This indirectly generates social destructuring and internal and external migration from the countryside to the cities and to other richer countries (like Spain, France and Belgium). Morocco has one of the highest poverty rates in the entire Mediterranean region, with 15% of the population living below the poverty line. [See here]
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International capital needs free (that is, highly deregulated) economic and financial scenarios: in Morocco, wages are precarious, labor rights are weak and there is no universal unemployment assistance, or no universal pension system. The privatization of basic services such as transportation, health, education, housing and pensions, on the one hand increases inflation and results in household indebtedness and on the other. Since the financial culture is low, it is easy for many families to fall into the problem of excess financing. Real estate bubbles are generated that contribute to the over indebtedness of families. This privatization has helped syphon wealth to the upper layers of society, thus creating or exacerbating social inequalities: Morocco is Northern Africa’s highest income-unequal country with the region’s largest gap between the top and bottom of the socio-economic ladder. In 2018, Morocco’s three richest people had a combined $ 4.5 billion in wealth, while 1.6 million Moroccans lived in poverty. And one of the typical phenomena of the struggle for access to services and opportunities that are not guaranteed is corruption. In Morocco, the growing phenomenon of capital flight is increasing, with estimates of 37 billion Moroccan dirhams evaded in the last 11 years. [See here] Add to all this the COVID 19 pandemic, which has caused a stagnation of the central economies and a slowing down of Moroccan exports, since industrialization is oriented towards the external market and it has impacted an economy with almost no internal growth stimulus; a steep decline in remittances and tourism, an unfolding collapse of the service industry revolving around tourism and an increase in unemployment, bringing about an estimated 130,000 enterprises partially or totally bankrupt, an estimated 530,000 jobs lost, and a worsening of the saturation of the health care system. The public health care system can´t cope with the pandemic, and private clinics specializing in the care of Covid-19 patients charge more for care, thus trampling on professional ethics. [See here]

In Morocco, the contrasts between this money making effervescence -only altered by the COVID-19 world pandemic- and the poor social conditions have to bee seen inside a wider picture. For centuries, there have been linguistic contrasts between the Arab world and the Berber Amazhig world. At a national level, it is estimated that around 30% to 40% of the total population speaks Amazhig, but this percentage is only an average between the regions where it is spoken and the regions where it is not. In fact, in the regions where it is spoken, the number of speakers can exceed 70%. There is a historical contrast between the communities of speakers of the different varieties of Amazhig demanding for decades the recognition of their linguistic reality, and the new generations, who, since 2011, when the new constitution recognized it as a co-official language, are distrustful of the little formal education that the state establishes. At the same time, given its history as part of the European colonial periphery, 10% of Moroccans, especially in the areas that belonged to the Spanish protectorate, can express themselves in Spanish (and surprisingly well), and around 60%, in the rest of the country, cand do so in French, in contrast to the new generations, who are increasingly exposed and open to the use of English. In turn, every Moroccan is virtually diglossic, having to make use of two variants of the same language: modern standard Arabic and Moroccan Arabic, or darija, with both differing by up to 30% in their vocabulary and syntactic structures. Public education is never on the radar of global capitalism for peripheral or semi-peripheral countries, which creates educational contrasts that can partly account for the linguistic contrasts: while the middle and upper classes express themselves in neat, carefully written French, the profession of public typist for illiterate people is a widespread one. The public education is a copy of the French system in terms of its educational levels, its curriculum and its exam models and sequencing, but it contrasts with France in its lack of means, teachers, facilities and academic training of students. In this sense, there are great differences between the level of education in the cities and in the countryside and between public and private education. The social classes with the greatest purchasing power enroll their children in private schools, whether they belong to the Moroccan system or to the foreign missions, which are schools belonging to the educational systems of foreign countries, mainly France, Spain and recently the United States, and which charge high fees. All in all, Illiteracy rates are between 30% and 50% in more developed areas and as high as almost 70% in rural areas.

The colonial heritage and the aforementioned rapid industrialization process also account for architectural contrasts, between the rural architecture, based mostly on mud, wood and stone as building material (depending on the terrain) and the urban development based on cement, brick and steel. The industrial and financial developmentalism is creating an urban middle class of liberal professions that dreams of escaping from the medinas, of going to the cement, metal and glass apartments, with elevators, garages, private gardens and with easy access in private transport to consumeristic shopping centers, in contrast with the European industrialized urban middle classes, who are dreaming of using the public transport, of having easy access to neighborhood stores, of returning to more rural settings, of practicing some form of permaculture.

There are also scientific and technological contrasts: while in 2017 Morocco put two satellites into orbit, there are mountain villages where medical care arrives on the backs of mules. Everyone uses or wants to use Western inventions: the printing press, the electric light, motorized means of transport (cars, motorcycles, trains, planes), the radio, of course, the television, mobile telephony, the Internet... so there isn't a great deal of resistance to the technological advance based on scientific progress, but this contrasts with the rejection by the religious elites to the advance of scientific knowledge and scientific culture, which can be partly explained because they associate it with Western culture. Paris represents well this duality: it is the city with the highest number of public libraries in the world... but it is also the capital city of the empire that invaded, looted and plundered the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia).

This struggle between two models of society: the pre-industrial one in peripheral Morocco and the industrial and increasingly digital one in semi-peripheral Morocco generates a world of social values contrasts and realities. The gap is widening between a more industrialized, urbanized and technified, a more Europeanized, more secular, modern and materially developed country, centered on the Atlantic coast, and a more traditional, rural, more Arab or Berber, more religious, materially poorer country in the rest of the territory. This is a contrast already established by the capitalism that made Morocco a colony, which has been underpinned by the capitalism that continued in independent Morocco.

In the more pre-industrial Morocco, there is still:

A culture of mutual support, where family, neighborhood and community networks are key, and where the individual is expected to contribute to the growth of the social environment.
A culture of informal economy, where the commercial activity is based on personal and collective interaction by means of physical, visual and verbal contact: products are touched, smelled, tasted. Citizens are active seller-buyers using cash, but also bartering, bargaining, haggling, tipping. This is a culture of neighborhood stores and stalls, of selling and buying in bulk. There is a tea culture as a ritual for buying and selling.
A culture of craftsmanship and manual production, with little labor specialization: the same person is usually involved in several, if not all, the links of the process: buyer/owner of the material (e.g: leather), producer of the product (leather goods) and seller (at the leather store or street stall). There is usually a contact with farming environments (as leather comes from cattle).
A culture of reusing and repairing, of surviving with one's own means and with the resources from the natural environment. A culture of self-sufficiency, with a measured use of natural resources. A culture of water understood as a cleaner (in religious and domestic environments).
A culture of socialization and leisure in the street, characterized by high degrees of dynamism, hustled activity, spontaneity, unpredictability, extroversion, expansiveness and noise. There is an intense interaction with the human environment. In (overcrowded) public space, what matters is that people may circulate, not that they respect each other's personal physical space.
A culture of hectic, spontaneous, unpredictable and more or less dangerous road traffic.
A culture of hospitality, tolerance and curiosity towards foreigners, including those from former colonizing countries. But also a certain religious phobia towards Shia Islam, its countries and followers (basically Iran and Irak in part).
A culture of religious uniformity and stability. There is a religious, ideological, cultural and sexual conservatism, with a strong presence of religion in everyday life events. Religion is central to understanding social interactions. The secularization of society is seen both as a cultural attack and as well as a moral nonsense.
A culture of defined, uniform and stable social and sexual roles and customs. There is a male predominance, more pronounced in the recreational aspect of public space – like bars, terraces, beaches - than in the professional space – like stores, shops. There are low degrees of tolerance for sexual liberation, gender debate and secularization processes.
A well set and developed cultural calendar. A strong oral cultural transmission, with alive and kicking Arab and Amazigh cultural references and traditions. Art is commonly understood as an outdoor collective aesthetic experience, and an extroverted expression of the self with frequent outdoor singing, dancing, instrument playing, group storytelling…
A culture of vitalism, a desire for progress, a struggle for existence, with dreams of improvement, even if only beginning with next generations, without much time for existential depressions.

In the more industrialized Morocco, there is a growing:

Culture of competitiveness, where family, community and social networks are affected to a certain degree by atomization and disintegration processes, where the social environment is expected to contribute to the growth of the individual.
Culture of the formal economy, with supermarkets and malls, with distribution chains and industrial and digital technology, with passive consumer-citizens using credit cards and online sales companies based on closed prices. There is a tendency to robotize consumerism and devoid it form human connection rituals (like tea drinking).
Culture of labor specialization, industrial production, technification of industrial and agricultural processes, with increasingly digital savvy middle classes lacking in agricultural, farming and forestry expertise and devoid of manual crafts knowledge.
Culture of over-exploitation of resources, of using and throwing away, of plastic wrapping everything, of pollution and ecological destruction, which is creating a breakdown of the unity between the communities and the natural environment they live in.
Culture of socialization and leisure in closed environments, more or less passive, not very spontaneous, predictable and more or less silent. Culture of online socialization. Tendency to ordered, aligned, less spontaneous, less and less intense interaction with the human environment, where respect the personal physical space of the other becomes more relevant.
Culture of clearly regulated, predictable, safer road traffic.
Trend of nationalism and xenophobia towards Subsaharans.
Greater religious diversity and greater laicism. Secularization is seen as mental liberation of conscience. Religion is less central to social interactions.
Greater degree of tolerance towards sexual liberalization, gender debate, sexual and social roles. The expression of love is less conditioned by the state or by religion. Timid acceptance of women´s rights and the rights for those who are sexually different. There is still no war of the sexes or feminism.
Audiovisual and digital cultural transmission. Art is understood more as an individual, introspective, introverted aesthetic experience (individual reading, individual listening, individual visit to museums …). The increasing loss of the own cultural traditions comes along with a greater adoption and consumption of foreign cultural products and fashions.
Greater (though still small) degree of passivity, indifference, existential disorientation, boredom-induced consumerism, depressions, disenchantment with the world.

How does all this affect the political situation and the September 8 elections? The parties running for these elections basically move along the lines of either an increasingly industrialized society, or a still strong pre-industrial one.

The Justice and Development Party (PJD) currently lead the coalition in government. It is the Islamist and conservative party, and it is in favor of pre-industrial society/religious values. They burst onto the political scene after gaining a solid popular base in the neighborhoods and streets of the big cities thanks to their social and charitable works and their growing presence in the rural world, making good use of new information technologies. It is using again its rhetoric against corruption and social injustice, using a simple and close discourse, avoiding ideology and technical jargon, focusing on moral values and religious references. They will probably win again.
The Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM) presents itself as the modern, liberal and secular alternative to the Islamist and conservative model of the PJD. The monarchy has the right to pick sides, and the PAM are the chosen ones. In economic matters, the only important difference with the PJD was the demand by the PAM to legalize the consumption of kif. They will probably come second.
The National Rally of Independents: they present themselves as a political center, with industrial and financial capitalist tendencies in the economic field.
The People's Movement: of the center, dominated by Tamazight speakers, but to date without a distinctly Amazhig agenda.
The Istiqlal Independence Party, nationalist and conservative, defends the pre-industrial society values.
The Socialist Union of Popular Forces, which represents a social democracy of leftist tendencies, with regards to social justice, wealth redistribution, and generally in favor of a soft transition to more industrial society values.
The Party of Progress and Socialism, formerly the Communist Party, with a mere testimonial role.

One of the constants in the legislative elections in Morocco, which are held every five years, is its high percentage of abstention: 37% in 2007, and 45% in 2011. In 2016, only 13.6 million Moroccans registered to vote, of the 24 million who can, and only 6.12 million deposited their ballot in the polls. Calculating the figures, the participation rate in 2016 was 25.5%. The political debate has been limited to the confrontation of different models of management of the current mode of production (the superstructure of society), while this model of production (the structure of society) has not been questioned.

The aim of these kind of parliamentary elections where the structures are never meant to be questioned, whether they take place in peripheral, semi-peripheral or central countries, is to shuffle the cards of the political parties to see which one can influence, with more or less determination, with more or less capacity, with better or worse results, the soft part of the superstructure: family, school, political parties, unions; media outlets, infrastructure, health and social security. They will not touch the hard part of the superstructure: the police, army, secret services, the monarchy itself. They will neither touch the structure itself: the ownership of the means of production, the maintenance and reproduction of the labor force, the generation and appropriation of surplus value. As far as foreign policy is concerned, the royal house will continue to set the strategic guidelines. The Islamists of the Justice and Development Party (PJD), deeply anti-Israeli, will not dare to seriously show their opposition to the diplomatic success of the King´s normalization of diplomatic relations with Israel in exchange for US recognition of the claim on the Sahara, even when they run for office on national feelings and knowing that only 4% of Moroccans are in favor of resuming relations with Israel.

Also, Morocco´s political system doesn't allow for unexpected breakups form the status quo: it´s a unitary constitutional monarchy, according to Wikipedia, a hard line Arab monarchy, according to the China Global Television Network , an autocracy, according to Tarik Ali. The royal house has extensive executive and legislative powers. Mohamed VI has the capacity to legislate by decree and the parliament itself is subordinated and restricted by his figure and he can always dissolve it. [See here] The king is the head of state, the head of the three armies, and as a descendant of the prophet, the head of the umma, the Muslim community of believers -the equivalent of the pope for Catholics-. With an annual budget of over $230 million, he has direct control over strategic public, financial and economic institutions.

It is true, though, that some objective conditions exist for a change. There is a peasant subject, with solid pre-capitalist roots, but it will have neither voice nor vote in these elections. There is the social conflict located in Al Hoceima, but it´s apparently under control. It is the territorial conflict in the Sahara that takes the cake, because if lost, it could make the monarchy implode, as the POLISARIO is openly aiming at liberating not only their territory, but also Morocco, from the monarchy. As for subjective conditions, there are few: some memories of the Arab spring, but they belong to an already remote past. The Tamazhig political agenda has gained in strength, but remains weak. There are no echoes, for instance, of the Islamic socialism advocated by Gaddafy´s Libya (yamahiriya), or of the pro-secularization currents of Ataturk's Turkey, or the pan-Arab nationalist currents of Nasser's Egypt. The vast majority of the population has bought the narrative percolating from the elites about the national unity, which makes them accept the invasion of the Sahara, regardless of class unity or even religious unity with the Saharawis. At the same time, there is a widespread pro Palestinian and anti Israel sentiment that the monarchy has tread upon in its desire to have the US green light for its Sahara claims.

Whatever the results, the central countries of global capitalism will see them with good eyes. For the Arab League, they will represent the continuity of religious stability; for the United States and the petro-states of the Persian Gulf, they will represent the economic continuity according to the guidelines of capitalist orthodoxy; for the European Union, they will represent the continuity of the political stability needed on southern borders. And this is so because Morocco is a key country in geopolitical terms: it faces the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, Africa and Europe. The United States has made Morocco the anti-communist buffer country of Africa since it became independent, in contrast with other African countries that achieved independence and popular democracy thanks to the support of the former Warsaw Pact. Now that China is beginning to replace the US as the number one investment partner in Africa, and that Russia is expanding its military cooperation with many African countries, especially Algeria, it is important for NATO to maintain an ally in the cap of the continent and for the US to continue to keep the Alaouite monarchy on its side. The US will not accept any political elections outcomes that threaten this relationship. Morocco also plays a very important role before Europe as a migratory retaining wall from the Sahel - Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad – and Europe really is interested in having a stable migratory retaining wall on its south border. Let´s bear in mind that the Sahel is currently the center of operations of the international jihadism, since it has favorable development conditions, such as weak state structures, internal political instability, corruption of the elites, tribal divisions and the abandonment and poverty of the local populations. Morocco is militarily aligned with the West, and in particular with the US, has been involved in NATO interventions since 1999, is a prominent member of AFRICOM and has recently established diplomatic relations with Israel.

The Moroccan royal house attributes to itself the political stability of the country, both in the temporary environment of the Arab springs, and in the geographical environment of the Arab world and the Sahel. Morocco does have, however, two domestic destabilizing factors: the Rif region and the Sahara region. On YouTube one can see the videos of the Rif protests after the violent death of Mouhcine Fikri in 2017. This fact created a wave of protests that put Rif´s capital city Al Hoceima on the radar for many European citizens. As a result of this conflict, the European public learned that the Moroccan criminal code is a legacy of the French criminal code that was enacted in 1963, which is in turn a revised version of the Napoleonic Code of 1818, extended in 1953 by the French colonial apparatus to crush the "nationalist terrorist movement”. As for Western Sahara, on November 13, 2020, the ceasefire between the Polisario Front and Morocco was broken, significantly impacting this regional stability, and negatively affecting also the Moroccan economy, already battered by the COVID-19 pandemic, and scaring away some foreign investment and possibly tourism in the future. The resumption of hostilities is the most important domestic current event going on in Morocco, sending ripples into the international arena. Western Sahara became a colony of Spain from 1884 (a few years before losing Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam to the US) to 1975. Under pressure from Morocco and Mauritania, Spain signed an agreement in 1975 - which has no international validity - for the North of Western Sahara to become Moroccan jurisdiction, and the South to become Mauritanian jurisdiction. In 1973, the POLISARIO Front, an acronym for the Popular Liberation Movement of Saguia el Hamra and Rio de Oro, was founded and in 1974 it proclaimed the right to independence and the creation of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). Mauritania went to war with the Saharawi independence movement, and lost, withdrawing from the territory. Its territory is the last in Africa yet to complete its decolonization process, and is recognized by more than 80 countries individually, although the United Nations recognizes neither the SADR nor the annexation promoted by Morocco in 1979. In 1991, the UN demanded to hold a referendum of self-determination, for which it instituted a mission to Western Sahara, the MINURSO, and a ceasefire signed between the two parties, extendable every year until the referendum was held. Western Sahara is a large territory with very little population, about 1 million inhabitants -with an estimated 180,000 living in the Tindouf refugee camps in Algeria-. The difficulty to draw up an electoral census since the last one made by Spain in 1974, disagreements over voter eligibility, plus Morocco´s insistence on an alternative autonomy plan, prevented the holding of the referendum in 1998 and 2000. The dialogue between Morocco and the POLISARIO for a peace agreement began in Switzerland in December 2018, but was suspended in May 2019. Morocco continues to control what it calls its Southern provinces, 80% of the total territory, with a 2,700 kilometer long wall built with support from Saudi Arabia and with logistical and security support from Israel, reinforced with more than 7 million landmines buried along the whole span. It is along this wall, which takes $ 4 million daily and an estimated 100,000 soldiers (more than half the total of the national army forces) to keep operative, that the renewed armed confrontations have been taking place between the POLISARIO and the Moroccan military forces. [See here]

Morocco has defended its right of possession before the UN since the first year of its independence, affirming that the Kabyles and Chiujs [tribal chiefs] of the desert before the French occupation had pacts of submission and obedience with Morocco. For Morocco, the POLISARIO does not represent the Saharawi people and is involved in human rights abuses. For Morocco, The Autonomy Plan, which would give Morocco only the control on diplomacy and foreign affairs, leaving the rest to Saharawis, is the most politically realistic and feasible solution, and it´s based on a sincere desire to alleviate the underdevelopment in Western Sahara through a transfer of human resources and infrastructure, contributing to an economic regional integration. According to Morocco, and Saharawi independent state would only add to the unstable situation of the Sahel. Morocco claims that already in February 2000, the then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan admitted it was impossible to conduct a referendum and that the UN has since abandoned this option. Morocco also claims that in international law, silence or absence of disapproval implies consent or approval, and since the UN has not voiced its opposition to Trump’s decision nor said that it does not change the legal status of the Sahara as a “non-self-governing territory,” it has tacitly accepted Moroccan sovereignty.

Certain parallels with Portugal, a country in the region, are notable. Between 1926 and 1974, Portugal attempted to integrate its colonies in Angola and Mozambique administratively and economically with the metropolis through the transfer of population and capital and the development of infrastructure. Portugal understood that military expenditure could only be covered by a strong increase in the country's productive capacity, which was based on foreign investment, partial industrialization, trade, tourism and emigration. While there was economic growth in certain productive sectors, the low standard of living, with low literacy rates and poor access to health, generated unrestrained emigration that ended in economic stagnation. The expanding capitalist economy did not bring better living conditions for the majority of the population either in the metropolis or in the colonies, and military measures had to be resorted to. Finally, the anti-colonialist movement in Angola and Mozambique was strong enough to prevail. Before a bloodless revolution brought it to an end, the the regime (Estado Novo), promoted conservative Catholic and nationalist values among the Portuguese population, emphasizing the exaltation of the Portuguese nation, its overseas territories, and its head of state. The motto of the Estado Novo was: Deus, Pátria e Familia (God, Fatherland and Family). The Alawite state is implementing an expanding capitalist economy based on foreign investment, partial industrialization, trade and tourism, while it promotes conservative Muslim and nationalist values among the Moroccan population, emphasizing the exaltation of the Moroccan nation, its recovered/annexed territories, and its head of state. Allah, Al Watan, Al Malik (God, Fatherland, King) is the motto of the monarchy. Morocco has the support of NATO, the United States, France, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, and, hesitantly, Spain.

On the other hand, the POLISARIO Front claims that even before the Spanish colonial presence, the Sahara was a state. The Saharawis existed, lived, organized and had their own status. Neither before nor after the colony did the Sahara have anything to do with Morocco. They mention that the International Court of Justice rejected Morocco´s claims in 1975. Self determination and voting are two basic democratic rights. They want to vote and decide whether they want autonomy or independence. For the POLISARIO Front, Morocco is conducting a military occupation only determined by its greed to access the huge phosphate deposits in the region, its rich fishing grounds and the possible oil reserves off the coast. They fought the Spanish, the Mauritanian, and now the Moroccan invasion. The aim of MINURSO was to draw up a peace plan and to hold a referendum on self-determination based on the 1991 UN resolution. The plebiscite has not yet taken place and no measures are being implemented in order for that to happen, but the MINURSO soldiers remain, so for the POLISARIO Front the only thing the MINURSO does is to indirectly perpetuate the status quo and the illegal occupation that allows the plundering of the natural resources of the territory to continue. The POLISARIO claims that what Morocco calls human resources transfer is plain introducing settlers, much alike what Israel is doing in Palestine. It has documented the human rights abuses the Saharawi population is subjected to by Moroccan police and military and the degrading situation that has led to a humanitarian catastrophe. [See here] A reality also documented by human rights groups like Amnesty International or news outlets like Democracy Now. The POLISARIO, so far undefeated in the battlefield by the Moroccan Royal Army, has achieved legal successes by going to the High Court of Justice of the European Union, which on December 21, 2016 considered the Saharawi people as a subject not under the sovereignty of Morocco. It claims that the Trump´s administration recognition of the Moroccan claim was a unilateral move that sidelines the UN resolutions and so it is ilegal, and that even several congressmen are trying to roll it back. [See here] The POLISARIO Front has the open support of Algeria, which turns it into the eternal enemy of Morocco, South Africa, and more recently, of Russia. The African Union recognizes the right of the Saharawis to their territories as a state. There are estimates that it can count on some 10,000 armed men. Despite being heavily armed as a country, the monarchy will have to think it twice before going to open war. The stakes are high. A possible war outcome contrary to its interests would be far more politically destabilizing than any surprise outcome in the legislative elections. Whoever wins the elections, the results are a mere formality, since all eyes will be on the outcome of the armed confrontation in Western Sahara. Until this is decided, the maxim: plus roi que jamais (more king than ever) will remain true, for now.

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