When M6 became King at the age of 35 he stamped his authority by very publicly sacking his father's powerful interior minister Driss Basri early on and quietly retired other of his father's close aides (AC Vol 40 No 23 Broom sweeps Basri & Vol 39 No 9 Blair-ites in the desert)...
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The days when the late King Hassan II's Interior Minister Driss Basri imprisoned opponents and swung elections are long past...
This all came in the aftermath of the burial (with a minimum of fuss) of the previous monarch’s veteran political fixer former Interior Minister Driss Basri (AC Vol 46 No 8)...
Moroccans look forward to political changes that were inconceivable even when the late King Hassan II was liberalising in the 1990s and his Interior Minister Driss Basri (now exiled in France an embarrassment to the Palace) ran the tough security services...
This comes three and a half years after King Mohammed VI made his single most important political decision to date to sack Driss Basri his father's coldly efficient Interior Minister...
Vol 44 No 16 |
- WESTERN SAHARA
Moroccans are nervous: there is widespread concern that goes beyond die-hard nationalist circles that `M6' and his team are incapable of managing such delicate political manoeuvres in contrast to his late father King Hassan II and his Interior Minister Driss Basri or Algeria's President Abdelaziz Bouteflika...
In generally free and fair elections on 27 September which lacked the sort of management the late King Hassan II's Interior Minister Driss Basri specialised in some 55 per cent of electors voted 22 parties into the new 325-seat legislature...
He has rivalled the gendarmerie commander General Hosni Benslimane as officers jostle for the space left by the sacked Interior Minister Driss Basri...
This was one element of 'dé-Basrisation' the restructuring of the Interior Ministry networks which had grown into one giant fief under Hassan's key minister Driss Basri...
Last summer the UN special envoy James Baker III (a heavyweight formerly United States Secretary of State) convened a flurry of meetings on alternative solutions (AC Vol 41 No 6) but found time for rounds of golf with Rabat's much-feared and now sacked Interior Minister Driss Basri...
He wants to keep the Western Sahara as strongly as his father Hassan II did with the difference that Mohamed has sacked his father's strong-man Driss Basri who believed he could swing a referendum the way he wanted while the new King's men less sure would rather not try...
