Despite the revoke of the royal pardon on
the Spanish rapist, social media activists are still calling for mobilizations
against, this time, the interdependence of justice on the royal powers and his
interference in justice. Social movements are mobilizing for a real
independence of justice from the king’s intrusions and for the dignity of citizens;
social movements’ activists have been able to pressurize the palace to react
quickly and to alter the decision to pardon the Spanish rapist. The political,
social and cultural ramifications of this outrageous episode in the silent
bargaining between the palace and the social movements will have everlasting
impact on both actors in the public sphere in Morocco.
Historically, understanding the movement against the royal amnesty
requires understanding how the framing of the collective needs are been coded
and interpreted in the public sphere in Morocco. The actors in the public
sphere have always negotiated their activism, existence and hence their
political demands with the palace. From the sixties onwards, the confrontations
had forced them to change their discourses, agendas and tactics. Contentious
performances of social movements in Morocco distorted the political culture of
the palace from authoritarianism into hybrid forms of a democratization phase
which is fragile and where both courting and controlling are new strategies of
the palace.
Politically speaking, this is a fragile time in Morocco after the
retreat of the Istiqlal Party from the government led by PJD; its chief of
government is still negotiating with RNI party to join the government to form a
new coalition to avoid both the fall of the government or early costly
elections. The delicate political timing of the controversial interactions
between the people and the authorities has weakened the political discourse of
the PJD and its social base of bargaining for its Islamist project.
The political game in Morocco leans heavily on benefits and costs in the
actors’ selective and collective incentives.
To measure both the benefits and the costs here, aspects related to
organization, expectation of success, new values and the action force should be
deconstructed to capture how collective performances and interactions creates
contentious politics and hence transform the public sphere.
The social and the cultural transformations caused by the “Daniel Gate”
are deeply embedded in the public private divide in the Moroccan social
make-up. The vibrancy and dynamism of the Moroccan civil society demonstrated
the innovative ways to create a new space between public and private and
between tradition and modernity in framing the emerging new values in the
public sphere; the issue of pedophilia itself has always been a taboo. The
“de-tabooization” of children’s rape in Morocco either by Moroccans or by
foreigners has been a social combat to transform the issue from private to
public debate in order to invade the public sphere and create counter-publics.
This process of issues travelling from the private to the public has also cause
the “desacralization” of the debate on the monarchy, its limits and its roles.
A major characteristic of the Moroccan public sphere is the
crystallization of very vibrant and autonomous social movements due to the failure
the state in the postcolonial era to recognize the new emerging
individualization of the process of the collective needs and false implementation
of democratization. This dynamism as a place-conscious identity in Morocco
among young people through the latest Daniel Gate proved how these emerging
identities confirmed the underlying mechanisms producing the new roles between
the king and its citizens.
published in Morocco World News:
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire