North African Political Unrest

Unless you've been living under a rock, you are aware that crazy things are happening in Egypt right now.  First the Tunisian president was ousted, then the president of Egypt faced his own series of protests.  While this has been going on many political commentators have been discussing what this means for other countries in North Africa.  I myself had wondered the same thing. 

Morocco is a monarchy.  Though they a parliament, the king has the ultimate say in this country.  King Mohammed VI is the only ruler of a country that is a descendant of the prophet Mohammed.  Morocco is the western most Muslim nation.  No holiday is official until the king declares it.  His word is law, and not to be questioned.  Actually, it is against the law to speak against the king.  I love how my students will tell me that they have freedom of speech here, then I ask, can you insult the king?  They ask me, can you say bad things about the president in America?  Then we have a nice discussion about freedom of speech in America and what it means. 

Due to the lack of true freedom of speech, it is hard to get a truly honest feel of how people really feel about the government.  For the most part (the big exception is the issue Western Sahara, I'll have to write about that later) the people are happy with the government.  This king is very popular.  His father was very "strict".  There was even an assassination attempt on the former king.  

My students reassure me that people like the king and that nothing would happen here like it did in Tunisia or Egypt.  The government has taken a few precautions.  For example, normally there is a main place where everyone goes to pay their car tax. Temporarily people are paying for that in different places so that they can avoid large groups of people meeting together.  There are also some scheduled protests happening over the next couple of weekends.

What I have found interesting is how your perception of events is very dependent upon your perspective.  I know people who have lived in Egypt and Egyptians who talked about the corruption of President Mubarak and did not speak favorably about his rule.  Yet, here, several of my Egyptian students really like President Mubarak.  Their families though are very wealthy, and I believe this has affects their perception of events.