The way the Governor of Settat province addressed the Regional Director of the Ministry of National Education, Preschool and Sports has once again opened the door wide to confirming the prevailing impressions in society regarding the "authoritarian" tendencies of the country's Interior Ministry officials towards other actors and stakeholders involved in managing public affairs.
The reprimand, in which the Governor of Settat did not show any kind of restraint or tact in addressing the regional education official in the sprawling province, sparked a wave of anger and criticism from social media activists who considered the behavior a kind of nostalgia for the school of the former Interior Minister Driss Basri, whose birthplace happened to be the scene of the controversial incident.
The incident indicates that the representatives of the "Mother of Ministries" still hold the reins of power with an iron fist, and that the outburst signed by the Governor of Settat refers to the old management style that places everyone under the command of Walis and Governors and portrays them as mere "servants and executors of their instructions", far from the slogans of developing and modernizing the administration and management style raised by the Kingdom.
Abderrahim El Allam, a political analyst and university professor, said that the way the Governor of Settat dealt with the situation "is not new in the dealings of authority figures and officials", confirming that this style "is prevalent and this language is part of the administrative culture".
El Allam added, in a statement to the electronic newspaper Hespress, that the language used by the Governor "is neither respectful nor polite", considering that this behavior is repeated in meetings of various institutions and in the same style.
The same speaker pointed out that Moroccan officials in various positions need training to express their anger in a polite way, stressing that Moroccans in general "do not express anger in a civilized, polite way", noting that this style "cannot be linked to the Governor, the Caid, and authority figures, and it is expected and can be found between the teacher and the inspector, and the official and the subordinate".
El Allam also considered that the authoritarian mentality "is present in all people, we all have an authoritarian mentality, and the state must make a great effort in training officials and employees, and the Ministry of Interior is required to strive in training its employees at the level of communication and the way it should be done".
For his part, Abdelhafid Younsi, a professor of political science at Hassan I University in Settat, considered that the authority figure in Morocco is an institution "of a special nature in terms of historical weight and its regulatory and arbitration role; and in terms of performing functions related to the post-independence state, therefore it has security, developmental, and social roles".
Younsi added, in a statement to Hespress, that these two contexts clarify that the authority figure derives his power from "the law and the institutional culture that gives the Governor unlimited powers in the relationship with individuals, the private sector, institutions, and civil society".
The university professor specializing in political science concluded, in his reading, that the behavior of the Governor of Settat with the Regional Director of the Ministry in charge of the national education sector is "an actual translation of an authoritarian interpretation of this role and contains an overstepping of Morocco's attempt to consolidate the new concept of authority; where there is a rational distribution of power rather than its concentration in the hands of one institution territorially or locally, because the surplus of power produces and will produce this type of practice", according to his opinion.
Younsi further explained that the incident constitutes a weakening factor for the institutions and the Ministry of Interior in terms of "its credibility and its centrality locally and territorially compared to the important role it played during the Corona pandemic, and gives a negative signal about the rationality of the decision-making process in our country", stressing that what happened "calls into question the official discourse regarding decentralization and the position of the authority figure in it", according to his expression.
The post "The shouting of the Governor of Settat" renews the questioning of the roles assigned to "Interior Ministry cadres" appeared first on Hespress - Moroccan electronic newspaper.
