Day 118: Morrocco

[minionofmidas]

Great country, great people, great hashish, my sort of rich-actually-but-not-western-style-insanely-rich place; but quite a horrible dictatorship actually.

[minionofmidas]

Great country, great people, great hashish, my sort of rich-actually-but-not-western-style-insanely-rich place; but quite a horrible dictatorship actually.

Well, somewhat of a dictatorship. Free and fair elections for the legislature, yes, but with a mostly absolute-monarchy attached. Odd...

There's no free speech whatsoever, and the Royal Dynasty owns an incredibly large share of the country.
Of course, the main opposition parties don't dare put up too many candidates, for fear of losing the free elections should they ever gain control of Parliament.

[minionofmidas]

None at all? I know there's not a lot but I'm going off of what I can dig up from FH (hmm, 2006 ratings out...what's going on in Guyana?) - it's not very nice on that front (press freedom comes out as "high Not Free"), but they're not on the level of North Korea or Sudan or Libya or Tunisia or you-fill-in-the-blank-Stan. [/quote]Well, yeah. (Sudan though? I'm sure Sudan tries to ban all free speech but I wasn't aware that they were much successful in their endeavours. Morocco is under pretty tight control.)

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I remember flipping through some magazines; a lifestyle thingy, back issues of some magazine on photography. There were big photos of the king congratulating him on the birth of his son, on so-and-so-many-years rule etc etc in every issue.

As to freedom of association etc ... I wouldn't know all that. Although I did know that University rectors are political appointees in Morocco.
Lots of Sub-Saharan Africans studying at Moroccan unis, btw.