King Mohammed VI in Marrakech to dispel emerging unease around political response

2023-09-13 10:29:59
Mohammed VI visits earthquake survivors at the Marrakech University Hospital, Morocco, September 12, 2023. Photo provided by the presidency. MOROCCAN NEWS AGENCY / VIA REUTERS

Suddenly, Marrakech was filled with excitement. It was 4:30 p.m. (local time) on Tuesday, September 12, when the traffic became more nervous. At the intersections, the police became more directive, the whistles more shrill than usual. King Mohammed VI had just arrived in town, a first, four days after the earthquake which struck the region on the night of September 8 to 9, causing devastation – 2,900 dead and 5,530 injured according to a provisional report – in villages near the High Atlas. In front of the university hospital center (CHU), where the sovereign went to the bedside of the wounded, the crowd crowded behind a careful cordon of police to capture a souvenir of the royal tour.

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But things moved very quickly: once the visit was over, the convoy of cars with tinted windows and supervised by bikers stormed off again to cheers and ululations. Surrounded by the public, plainclothes police officers ensured that no unofficial photos were taken of the scene – media coverage of the king’s activities is very strict – going so far as to check with a journalist that A miniature camera was not hidden in his sunglasses.

Thus this visit to the Marrakech University Hospital closes a somewhat confusing sequence. It will not be said that Mohammed VI is indifferent to the fate of his people in distress. The message is central, as unease began to arise in Morocco in the face of a response from the State which was slow to take shape and show concern. Surprised by the earthquake in Paris, where he was on a private visit, the king returned to Rabat on Saturday, where he chaired a ” work meeting “during which he gave his “very high instructions” pour “pursue with dispatch” the delivery of relief. But a visit to the field was essential, especially since the monarch’s long absences from Rabat in recent years have fueled worried questions.

Don de sang

If the Moroccan state mobilized in the hours following the earthquake, with an army very present in the affected villages – its camps are visible in Amizmiz, Asni or Ouirgane and its helicopters fly over the Agoundis valley by providing aid where possible – it remained to give a human, and therefore political, face to the official response. During the 2004 earthquake in the Al-Hoceima region, in the Rif, Mohammed VI took four days to get to the disaster zone, where he spent several nights in a tent. The same deadline will therefore have been respected, but we did not know, on Wednesday, whether the sovereign would go, beyond Marrakech – a city little affected in itself – to the remote villages of the neighboring High Atlas, where the humanitarian situation is critical. .

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