Moroccans “Barra” Can’t Vote
From Laila Lalami’s blog:
By the way, even though I have dual Moroccan and American citizenships, and even though the constitution provides for the voting rights of MREs (or Moroccans Residing Abroad) I am not able to vote in these elections, because no procedures have been put in place for absentee ballots. Voters must be present at their precincts. More than 3 million Moroccans are thus excluded from the democratic experiment.
My Dad asked me about this just yesterday, wondering if Hamou had been able to obtain an absentee ballot - I guess not.
Hamou says, “Why should we have to vote when we’re not there? Do you think it’s important? What about a lot of Moroccans who are in the country and they don’t vote?”
I suspect that many other Moroccans share his views, sadly.
September 7th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
it’s worthless anyway, MRE can’t vote for a deputy of their community in the country where they live. who wants to vote for the deputy somewhere he left or never lived before?
September 7th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
who wants to vote tout court..
September 7th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
@Xoussef - I see what you mean. I guess the only reason you’d want to vote is if you felt like you had some stake in the future of the country you left. If you planned on moving back there at some point, for example.
What’s “voting tout court?”
September 7th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
[…] from Morocco Times, is dismayed that some Moroccans living abroad don’t feel the need to take part in their country’s […]
September 7th, 2007 at 9:06 pm
Hm - yes, I guess I’m dismayed (”sadly”) - but like The Lounsbury likes to remind me, you can’t compare Morocco and the States. My feelings of importance attached to voting may not translate to the Moroccan situation.
September 10th, 2007 at 10:17 am
Actually, MRE may vote if they bother to travel to Morocco to vote in the constituency where they are registered (the one where they were last registered before leaving Morocco, or the one their parents were registered in usually). What they cannot do is to vote from abroad, as most other countries (for example Algeria and Tunisia) allow. The other country allowing its citizens living abroad to vote but on condition that they travel back to their country of origin to exercise that right is Lebanon, where actually quite a few thousand of Lebanese living abroad get back in order to vote. However, they may be motivated by the sectarian competition, Lebanese living abroad being mostly Christian, while those in Lebanon are mostly sunni and shia Muslim.
September 10th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
Most young folks that I talked to on Friday didn’t vote, including R and his family. He didn’t think it ws important at all. In fact, he viewed it as useless because “all the politicians are corrupt.” I threw out a theory that if you vote them out on a regular basis then corruption becomes less likely because they can’t gain power. On the upside, one of his friends worked at a precinct counting votes during the election, so there is some hope for new voters.