From May 31 to June 01, 2012, the Multidisciplinary Faculty of Safi hosted the second Forum of young university students around the question of political participation in light of the new Constitution under the theme "Youth is a lever for democratic building".

This crossroads of training, reflection, and exchange, organised by the research and study group around local democracy and governance in close collaboration with the local youth council in Safi, was the occasion for an exercise in sharing between professors and students from the Faculties of Safi, Taza, and Mohammedia.

The opening session was marked by the speech of Said Khoumri, general coordinator of the forum on behalf of the preparatory committee and the research and study group around local democracy and governance; Hassan Bougerd, dean of the FPS; Ali Karimi, president of the Moroccan Association of Political Science; Tarek Tlati, coordinator of the master's degree in public policy and local administration management in Mohammedia; the president of the regional human rights committee in the Marrakech-Safi region; Ahmed Ckilech, president of the legal studies section at the FPS; and the representative of the local youth council in Safi.

The first plenary session of the forum was devoted to the theme "The inputs of political participation in the new Constitution," masterfully orchestrated by Hassana Kiji, professor of political science at the FPS, and moderated by a group of research professors. Mohammed Ben Hlal, professor of political science at the FP of Taza, devoted his intervention to the question of women's participation, which he insisted on placing in its transitional context. With figures and statistics to support it, Ben Hlal highlighted the mediocrity of the participation rate of women in public affairs, politics more precisely. According to him, several political, legal, and institutional factors block the path to female participation, which is reduced because of different forms of discrimination.

Abdellatif Bakkour, professor of political science at the FPS, addressed the theme "Youth and political participation". According to him, the rate of representation of young people in political life reflects a real crisis of participation of this category, which should integrate the decision-making process at the national and local level. According to figures presented by Bakkour, the 2009 communal elections, for example, only allowed a representativeness of 8.5% of young people under 25 within the communal councils! Several factors, he added, contribute to the amplification of this observation, to which the new Constitution has tried to provide answers.

Ibrahim Oultit, professor of political science at the FPS, addressed the theme of participation according to a comparative method that evaluates democratic advances in Morocco in light of universal standards and criteria. To this effect, he specified, Morocco is classified among totalitarian political regimes according to the international democracy indicator. For him, the projection of universal concepts onto the Moroccan context is "fiction" for the researcher who finds himself confronted with flagrant disparities. As for participatory democracy, Oultit considers it still linked to the official discourse which excludes opposing social actors. Before concluding that the legitimacy of the Moroccan political regime remains historical and not rational, based on elections which are the expression of democratic regimes.

Said Khoumri, professor of political science at the FPS, rejects the idea of fiction in scientific work, and the methodical work of researchers is based on the objective and rigorous analysis of reality in order to better situate it in its future context, far from all forms of premonitions. For him, the new Constitution is rich in legal texts that optimise political participation, notably Article 7, which mentions for the first time the exercise of power by political parties; Article 10, which has consecrated a privileged status to the opposition; Article 47, which stipulates the appointment by the King of the head of government from the party that came first in the legislative elections; and Article 88, which considers that the government can only be constitutional after its installation by Parliament.

For Said Khoumri, the new Constitution has declared and recognised important rights, the declension of which remains conditioned by certain factors influenced by the nature of political action and the balance of powers.

The programme of the second Forum of young university students reserved the second half-day of May 31, 2012, for the work of four workshops that debated the question of political participation of young people, political parties, women, and civil society, with the perspective of the restitution of the work of the workshops and the validation of the Forum's recommendations.