Morocco is the one country where mass protests during the initial Arab Spring of early 2011 produced fundamental yet peaceful reform, but without regime change. In June of that year, a popular referendum approved a new constitution in which the king is no longer called “sacred” and must appoint his prime minister from the party with the most parliamentary seats. In November, a competitive election brought an opposition, avowedly Islamist political party to lead the government for the first time: the Party of Justice and Development (PJD) and its current prime minister, Abdelilah Benkirane.
Since then, the country has been largely calm. Occasional small-scale protests persist in various cities and provincial towns. Yet a few weeks ago, on the second anniversary of the “Feb. 20 Movement” that brought hundreds of thousands of demonstrators out into the streets of Morocco’s major cities in 2011, barely a thousand turned out for protests in the capital of Rabat.