Le Monde Diplomatique reveals: “King Mohamed VI controls most investments…Moroccans petrified by his reign”

French news-magazine “Le Monde Diplomatique” affirmed in its edition for the month of October that Moroccans are “petrified” by King Mohamed the Sixth’s reign, adding that the upcoming legislative elections scheduled for October 7, “will not change anything” in the Moroccan kingdom which is now beset by a “difficult” living and social situation.

The French monthly magazine said, in a telling report in which the journalist sent on assignment in Morocco changed wittingly the names of those Moroccans interviewed as well as the names of their villages for fear of retaliation, that the Moroccan opposition ” is facing a lot of difficulties to defend the meager concessions” included in the Constitution of 2011, arguing that this bleak juncture is occurring in a context characterized by a “submissive” local media, while “the questioning of the authority of King Mohammed VI has been banned”.

French Journalist Pierre Dom said that the new constitution proposed by King Mohammed VI in July 2011 in the context of the so-called “Arab Spring”, as part of a democratic transition, “did not detract anything from the power and authority of the King”, regretting the fact that Western embassies, and especially the French one in Rabat, “are doggedly continuing alone in paying tribute to the so-called progress of democracy in Morocco”.

The newspaper wrote, quoting a political science professor at the University of Rabat that this new constitution “did not affect the hard core of ownership of power,” and explained that “the king remains at the helm of the Moroccan regime and controls the legislative, executive and judicial branches  and even the country’s financial levers through the National Investment Company, of which the Royal family owns 60 percent of stakes, with King Mohammed VI remaining the most important economic stakeholder of the Kingdom”.

It further said that most Moroccans were yearning for “a genuine democratic change,” calling for “an equal distribution of the wealth of the country,” adding that in Morocco around 12 million people live on less than two dollars a day,”, pointing out to this effect that between 2011 and 2016, the King’s huge wealth rose dramatically, and the poverty rate rose, too, and this is quite abnormal”, they lamented.