Moroccans protest polls, violence in the capital

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By Souhail Karam

RABAT | Sun Oct 23, 2011 7:03pm EDT

RABAT (Reuters) - Thousands of Moroccans demonstrated in cities across the country Sunday, calling for a boycott of early parliamentary polls next month whose outcome will be key to the future of reforms crafted by the royal palace.

The protests are the latest in a series of regular peaceful demonstrations by the youth-led opposition February 20 Movement, inspired by uprisings that ousted leaders in Tunisia and Egypt to demand a parliamentary monarchy and punishment for officials accused of graft.

In the capital Rabat, a Reuters reporter saw dozens of riot police with truncheons beating and kicking protesters who had gathered in front of the parliament building at the end of a march by around 3,000 people.

A local elected official in the country's biggest city, Casablanca, said about 8,000 people took part in a similar protest there. Several thousand took part in protests in other cities including Fes and Tangier.

"These nationwide protests were held around the common theme of calling for a boycott of November 25 parliamentary polls," said Omar Radi, an activist from February 20 Movement's local committee in Rabat.

"It is obvious that the polls will bring to power the same figures who have for years been plundering the wealth of the country and holding hostage the future of the Moroccan population," he added.

King Mohammed has promised in recent speeches that the elections will be fair and transparent. The main opposition Justice and Development Party (PJD) has decried laws recently passed for the polls as doing too little to prevent vote-buying.

Under reforms approved in a July referendum, King Mohammed will hand over some powers to elected officials but will retain a decisive say over strategic decisions. The new government will draft laws enshrining a new constitution.

In March the 48-year-old monarch, reacting swiftly to protests inspired by the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt, promised to reduce his powers through changes in the constitution. The parliamentary poll was brought forward from September 2012.

But protesters in Rabat, joined for the first time this week by hundreds of jobless graduates, chanted "The elections are a charade, you will not fool us this time."

"Money and power must be separated," read a placard carried by the protesters, while many brandished pictures of the body of Muammar Gaddafi, the slain deposed leader of Libya, with the caption: "This is what happens to despots."

The charter drawn up by the king won near-unanimous support in a July referendum that critics said was itself far too hasty to allow proper debate.

Parliamentary elections have been held in Morocco for almost 50 years in what was widely perceived as window-dressing for the kingdom's Western allies. The king and a secretive court elite named the government and set key policies.

Their grip on power was helped by high illiteracy rates, an ingrained deference to a dynasty that claims descent from the Prophet Mohammad, and control over the media.

The interior ministry has used a mixture of repression and divide-and-rule tactics to tame political dissent. This has led many Moroccans to lose interest in politics: turnout at the last parliamentary polls was officially 37 percent.

(Editing by Tim Pearce)

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Polls Show Electorate Could Go Either Way in 2012

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A new wave of survey research is providing valuable insight into the political climate and the prospects for President Obama holding onto his job in next year's election.

Here is a summary of five surveys from the past week that I consider among the most important, including my analysis of what it all means:

1. There's an opening for the eventual Republican presidential nominee to do very well next year with Hispanic voters, who normally vote Democratic. Fifty-seven percent of Hispanics still consider themselves Democrats, 19 percent consider themselves Republicans and 15 percent are independents, according to a poll for Univision by Democrat Mark Mellman and Republican Dave Sackett. But by another measure, the Republicans should do well. Forty-three percent of the Hispanics polled call themselves conservative, 37 percent say they are liberal and 20 percent are moderate.

[Read: Can Perry, Bachmann, or Romney Save the GOP Brand?]

2. The Hispanic population is growing fast, a sign that the Hispanic vote could be one of the most important in 2012. A state-by-state analysis is particularly revealing. In Florida, the voting-age Hispanic population grew by nearly 250,000 between 2008 ad 2010, according the Census Bureau. Meanwhile, the white voting-age population in Florida increased by only 30,400. In New Mexico, the number of voting-age Hispanics rose by more than 30,000 while the population growth among whites was about 19,000. In Nevada, there were 44,000 more voting-age Hispanics during the same time frame while the number of voting-age whites increased by only 18,000. [Read: Obama is Finding it Tough to Engage Core Constituencies.]

3. An "excitement gap" favors the Republicans. Democrats' morale is low, a bad sign for Obama, who is trying to energize his base. About 44 percent of Democrats say they are less enthusiastic about casting their ballots for president in 2012 than in the past, while 45 percent say they are more enthusiastic than usual. Among Republican voters, 58 percent say they are more enthusiastic about voting than they have been in the past. All this is from a USA Today/Gallup Poll,

4. The presidential race is a dead heat in the key swing state of Ohio, between Obama and either Mitt Romney or Rick Perry, the two front runners, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll. Obama would win 44 percent to Romney's 42, and defeat Perry, 44-41. Clearly, Ohio is up for grabs and it could be the most pivotal state of all. [See 10 reasons Obama should be re-elected.]

5. Fifty-two per cent of Americans say that if Obama were president of a major U.S. company, he would have been fired by now, according to a Fox News poll, and only 38 percent say he wouldn't have been fired. The subtext of this poll is competence, and fewer Americans think Obama has it.

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Will Rick Perry's Democratic Past Hurt Him at the Polls?

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Texas Gov. Rick Perry has comfortable leads against his rivals for the 2012 GOP nomination, and with front-runner status come attacks. Fellow Texan and Rep. Ron Paul fired one of the first shots across his bow, attacking Perry for being "Al Gore's Cheerleader" during the 1988 campaign. Perry, who was a Democrat until 1989 and supported Gore's 1988 run for the White House, has billed himself as a rock-ribbed conservative, and one of the most damaging labels in politics is that of a turncoat or flip-flopper. Will this attack have any bite against Perry?

Politicians have been known to evolve. Ronald Reagan came to Hollywood as a staunch Democrat, but grew into a Republican. "I didn't leave the Democratic Party. The party left me," Reagan explained. Hillary Clinton's first foray into politics was as a "Goldwater Girl" in high school, supporting Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater's 1964 run for the White House before the Vietnam years turned her into a Democrat. And the South's gradual transition from a Democratic stronghold into a Republican stronghold left many politicians changing their stripes, including some current lawmakers such as Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby.

[See a slideshow of the 2012 GOP contenders.]

Perry's own political evolution mirrors that of Texas, which had been growing from Democrat to Republican until the GOP began to dominate in the late 1980s. Even before he joined the GOP in 1989, Perry pushed conservative themes as a Democrat, joining other state legislators to push for budget cuts. His endorsement of then-Tennessee Sen. Al Gore in 1988 may sound bad now, but Perry can reasonably argue that the self-proclaimed "raging moderate" was the most conservative Democrat in a field which included minister Jesse Jackson, Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt, Illinois Sen. Paul Simon, and former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart.

"I was under the false idea that conservative Democrats could save the Democrat Party. They couldn't," Perry told talk show host Sean Hannity, echoing Reagan's assertion that it was the party, not him, that had changed. He has said Al Gore's support for the so-called "Star Wars" missile defense system was a key reason he endorsed the Tennessee senator, although Gore actually had blasted the system shortly before the 1988 campaign began.

Unfortunately for Perry, Gore lost the 1988 race, but went on to become the Democratic standard-bearer in 2000, and now has a saintly status among liberals--while being a lead villain among conservatives--due to his work as an environmental activist. "Regardless of the fact that Al Gore was the prolife conservative Democratic candidate in 1988, that's something that a lot of folks just don't get," says Andrew Langer, president of the conservative Institute for Liberty. "They know the Al Gore of 2000, the Al Gore of An Inconvenient Truth, and the Al Gore who represents the poster child of the attacking progressive left of the modern age."

[See cartoons about the GOP 2012 primary.]

Nevertheless, it's unlikely that the issue is going to cause huge headaches for Perry. For starters, his chief rival for the GOP nomination, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, may hesitate to bring up the "flip-flop" issue lest it brings more attention to his own political evolution on issues such as gay rights and abortion. Romney, who during the 1994 Massachusetts Senate campaign said he would be a stronger advocate for gay rights than his-opponent, Ted Kennedy, was seen by many conservatives as an opportunist uncommitted to conservative principles during his run for the 2008 GOP nomination. Perry's more conservative opponents, including Paul and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, are likely to use the Democrat label while also noting the Texas governor's more moderate stances on immigration reform, to claim that he is less committed to the conservative cause than they are. Perry's answer to the question may be enough to win over skeptical voters, but explaining can be a distraction during campaigns.

"It's so easy to answer, but you have to answer it," says University of Virginia Professor Larry Sabato. "You have to spend time and resources to answer it."

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