The Economist is pleasantly surprised about Mali’s election to restore democratic government in the wake of its civil war:
The election [on Sunday] was praised by observers for its high turnout and overall transparency. But coming just six months after a French-led force chased away Islamist militants who had seized control of the country’s vast north, and hastily arranged under intense international pressure, it was nonetheless riddled with flaws. Hundreds of thousands of voters were disenfranchised for lack of new biometric identification cards. Even some who made it to the polls, cards in hand, could not find their names on voter lists.
Still, it was not the debacle many outsiders had forecast. On an otherwise quiet day, voters crowded the streets leading to polling stations. Many marvelled that they had never seen such numbers at the ballot box. The 53.5% turnout shattered the previous record by 15 percentage points. Perhaps most important in a country still jittery after the jihadist occupation of the north, the day passed without violence.
Meanwhile, Michael Totten praises Morocco as a model of moderation in the Arab World:
Morocco has free and fair elections, but not for its head of state. That has to change sooner or later. The Moroccan monarchy will eventually have to sideline itself or face being sidelined by others. Smart Arab kings know this is true of the institution in general. As Jordan’s King Abdullah said to Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, “where are monarchies in 50 years?” In the meantime, Morocco provides a safe space for peaceable coexistence between liberals and Islamists, Muslims and Jews (including Israelis on holiday), Arabs and Berbers, modernists and traditionalists.
The Western press has wasted a lot of words lately describing the Muslim Brotherhood as moderate. But Muhammad VI is a real moderate. He’s a conservative in the sense that he belongs to a very old tradition and order, and he’s a liberal insofar as he advances women’s rights and has willingly abdicated some of his power. He’s a Muslim ruler who not only protects Jews, but declares Jewishness a part of Moroccan identity. He pushes for careful and deliberate change without overwhelming the country with too much at once, thus avoiding a hostile and potentially violent reaction from traditionalists.
Morocco is a little like Costa Rica during the Cold War—a calm, friendly, stable, sane, peaceable, and essentially civilized oasis in a region that has known precious little of those things.
Previous Dish on the recent upheavals in the Arab world here, here, and here.
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