13.06.12 Morocco Politics and Security
Morocco's former finance minister publicly accused of corruption
On 11 June, parliamentary debates were suspended in the Chamber of Deputies when
an MP of the ruling PJD, Abdul Aziz Avtate, accused former finance minister Salaheddine Mezouar of accepting bribes 'under the table' in a tirade about the need for reform.
MPs of Mezouar's party, the Rassemblement national des indépendants (RNI), one
of
the largest opposition parties, expressed their anger before the speaker ended
the session.
Avtate's accusation may be seen partly as a reaction to RNI deputies' acerbic
criticism of the PJD's unpopular measures. Interviewed in the francophone
global
weekly Jeune Afrique, Mezouar said that Islamist PJD policies are just
sensationalist. Elected as president of the RNI in April, Mezouar's ambition is
to
transform the RNI, a centrist party of technocrats and notables, into the
leading
opposition party.
In the November 2011 elections, the RNI won 52 seats (out of 395), as opposed to
39 in the outgoing parliament. Mezouar believes that the PJD has no real answer
to current economic problems; the recent budget adopted by the Islamist-led
government is simply the budget for 2012 drawn up under Mezouar last year. So
far,
from the RNI point of view, the Islamists have put forward fragments of
legislation around religious and ideological issues to hide their incapacity to
satisfy
society's expectations in terms of jobs and improvements in daily life. Rather
than being capable of implementing true reform, the current government prefers
spectacle.
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