Moroccan bloggers tackle RAM strife, Ramadan, athletics woes

2009-09-03

Striking pilots at Royal Air Maroc (RAM), a subpar Moroccan performance at the World Athletics Championships, Yahoo's alleged "Americanisation" of Maktoob ... these are just a few of the topics currently attracting attention in the Moroccan blogosphere.

By Rachid Jankari for Magharebia in Casablanca – 03/09/09

[www.ibnkafkasobiterdicta.wordpress.com] Blogger Ibn Kafka says advertiser pressure was to blame for the lack of coverage of RAM strikes.

A series of strikes that snarled the flights of Royal Air Maroc (RAM) at the height of the summer tourist season were marked by an "absence of media coverage which – for once – has nothing to do with pressure from the authorities, but rather are the result of the power of money," according to blogger Ibn Kafka.

The blogger notes that RAM is an important advertiser in Morocco's print media, and that such media outlets may be reluctant to lose a key customer by reporting the ins and outs of this "crisis" in too much detail.

For his part, Larbi.org, the French-based Moroccan blogger, is focused on Yahoo's purchase of the Arab Web success story, e-mail and web portal Maktoob.

"Maktoob is a great success, of which there are very few on the Arab Internet," says the blogger. "It can lay claim to 16 million users across the Arab world, whilst its buyer only has 44. The great unknown is the reaction of [Maktoob's] users, who have a distinct sense of identity. Some have already started to express their dissatisfaction at the Americanisation of their portal."

Yahoo may hope to avoid getting off to a bad start, as recently happened to Morocco's track team at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin.

Citoyen Hmida makes no secret of his disappointment at the poor performance of Moroccan stars at the key competition.

"At the start, there were more than 20 of them, including a former two-time world champion … surrounded by a small group who had more or less proved themselves in modest Arab, African or Mediterranean stadiums," writes the blogger.

"At the end of the competition, the result was zero," says the writer. "Not a whiff of a medal, not even an honourable mention … Worse than that, their performance was negative. Two runners, one guy and one girl (long live equality), were caught using "illicit products", a nice way of saying they were caught out by anti-doping tests."

On a different track, this one connected with the start of the new academic year, comes advice from the writer of the Politis blog, which deals with politics in Morocco. In a post that comes on the heels of letters from 18 writers and artists in the weekly publication TelQuel, the blogger says: "In a few weeks, the new academic year will have arrived.... So, a word of advice: Succeed on your own! The rest will follow!"

To conclude on a Ramadan note, the success of the Hassan II Mosque has not gone unnoticed, with more than 40,000 people showing up there to pray every evening during the holy month.

For blogger bigbrothermaroc, whose slogan is "Watch those who watch you", the secret of this success lies with one man.

"Just one man," the blogger intones. "His name is Omar Qazabri. A young man who leads the evening prayers — with his voice and way of chanting verses from the Qur'an, those praying are unaware of the passage of those 50 minutes as they stand in endless queues to carry out their taraweeh prayers."