After colonisation, hopes were immense thanks to the natural and intellectual riches of this place blessed by the gods, the infrastructure, and the human element, with the nursery that was the Berber College—which became the Tarik Ibn Ziyad High School after Independence—providing the nation with a true hive of competent executives and senior civil servants. We were entitled to hope for dazzling development.

What happened was that for fifty years, and to this day, we have chosen and endured municipal councils of extraordinary rapacity and greed, who helped themselves in plain sight of everyone without shame, instead of serving their city and its citizens.

Fortunately, nature occasionally gets things right.

His Majesty the King did us the distinct honour of visiting us more than two years ago. The good fairy leaned over our city, and thanks to the resources of the Hassan II Fund for Human Development, the historic centre of Azrou has been totally transformed. Certainly, there is still much to do in other districts of the city, but at least we have clean pavements, green spaces, bins, and public benches, though not nearly enough car parks. It is true that you cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs.

But where the shoe really pinches is that our dear strategists who manage the city, while ignoring its vital interests and those of the citizens, felt obliged to paint every moving pavement as a no-parking zone.

In this historic centre, there was a very large car park that was transformed into a pedestrian esplanade, and car parks that already existed (free or almost free) were made official paid parking zones.

The only car park that was set up next to the grand mosque has been ready for more than six months. It is closed to the public for some unknown reason, while the centre of Azrou is turning into a bottleneck (it is true that our local police are uncompromising and enforce the prohibitions), which means that the poor individual who wants to visit the centre has no choice but to move on, and the surrounding shopkeepers are kicking themselves.

A city cannot have only paid parking. How can our dear elected officials explain their choices? Arteries wide enough to support parking on both sides without hindering traffic are prohibited (between the new mosque and the old one, and between the new mosque and the Rock of Azrou).

How can one explain the free parking for about fifteen spaces that hinders traffic in front of Maroc Telecom on an artery twice as narrow as the one next to the mosque?

How are these stupid decisions made, and how can one explain the closure of this brand-new car park that is ready and has been forbidden to the public for more than 8 months?

Can this municipal council, which deprives citizens of a car park for 8 months and perhaps more because it is not yet rented out, not return the favour to those who contributed to its election, or learn a little from the Moroccan Motorways Company, which makes sections free before their inauguration? What arrogance and what contempt for those who allowed them to occupy positions for which they have neither the skills, nor the substance, nor the class!

By what right does this municipal council impose either paid parking or a prohibition on an entire city? Who are the real contractors for these car parks?

You should see the faces of the tourists who see free spaces that are forbidden to them by piles of stones, a vulgar rope, and a pathetic sign, and who finally move on like our visiting compatriots without stopping in Azrou... The poor city of Azrou, a victim of its own people!

Azrou, it must be said, is also a victim of its citizens. You have to see them, listen to them on the café terraces where they spend entire hours chatting; they have an opinion on everything, know the actions of everyone, every elected official, every authority, their slightest schemes, and call them every name in the book (all of them are V...). They thus remake their world, and once they have vented, they go home with a peaceful soul, and the next day they start the same litany again.

But those to whom all these names are addressed are more greedy than intelligent, but unfortunately, they know the adage that says: the dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.

It is true that here, the caravan moves on and nothing happens, and we would be capable, as usual, of re-electing the same wheeler-dealers who ruined this city.

To finish, and not to put all citizens in the same boat, a petition with more than 200 signatories of shopkeepers and citizens was addressed on 12 January 2011 to the governor of the Ifrane province to denounce these abuses of power by the Azrou municipality. Eight months later, this petition had the effect of a sword in the water and did not lead to any reaction from the services concerned. This shows the esteem held for citizens who ask the mediator appointed by the Sovereign to intervene to resolve their problems.

We also wonder, as citizens of Azrou, if the Ifrane prefecture has not adopted the same attitude as the city's officials.