Sneezing-without-hank
By Rachid Chelouah
Rachid-Chelouah.
Following the e-petition on the social network website ‘facebook’ against the Al Fassi domination of the most critical positions in Morocco, the Moroccan channel 2M invited the Minister of Health, Yassmina Baddou
for, let’s call it ,a TV debate. The prefabricated show served as a plot against the facebook Moroccans’ will for a democracy led by the people, and when they say the people they mean the Moroccans who are not a part of the empire of Al Fassi.
The guest on the channel played three roles in the comedy play. One of the Ministers of health, the second was the spokeswoman of the current government and the third and the most dangerous was the representer of the Al Fassi doctrine.
At the end of the talk, the Minister was given a preassembled opportunity to insult the Moroccans labelling them racists.
Baddou’s intervention calling us racists is a cardinal error. First this is an index of how harshly she punished all participants in the e-petition on facebook. In essence this entails that her Excellency does not monitor the mechanism of social ordering and dispute solution. On the other hand her use of the word racism is genuinely a manifestation of her short knowledge of what semantically the concept racism stands for. If the minister manages to formulate an accurate definition of racism, I will be ready to tear all my degrees and ‘shut up’ forever.
Mrs. Baddou! There has been no international concrete definition for racism so far. Racism is always related to race and race does not exist because simply humanity can not be divided into races. In short racism does not exist as long as ‘race’ has no scientific definition as in the words of Ali Rattansi one of the pioneer writers on racism. Therefore, as a good Minister, Yasmina Baddou should immediately return to the same channel and apologise to the public for her verbal discrimination of the participants of facebook petition because their action is a peaceful demonstration against a political hegemony of a family known as Al Fassi.
Further to these considerations , Yasmina ,instead of challenging the people paying her wage , should sought new patterns of dialogic discourse to diagnose the scopes of the disease instead of curing the manifestation , but as the minister is qualified in law rather than medical science , it will take her a while to understand that facebook petition is a symptom of an infection within a system she is operating in because members of the group against Al Fassi power monopoly is merely a remote demonstration from a computer rather than in front of the parliament.
If we contend that Mrs. Baddou’s label ‘racists’ is adequately conceptualised within the framework of what she called herself “political woman”, it is important to take as a starting point a pre-assessment scanning of the incurable diseases of her ministry .
In January Al Jazeera channel made coverage of the tragic story of a Moroccan national called Mohamed Remiqui from the suburbs of the city of Casablanca after he was left paralysed after he got vaccinated for the H1N1 known as swine flu. Mr. Remiqui, a father of four dependent children got his vaccines at noontide but at midnight he was classified as disabled as he was paralysed due to the side effect of the injection. At first the disability connection with the vaccine was denied by officials while some doctors reported the credibility that it is possible that there are problems that occur when treatment goes beyond the desired effect. Mr. Remiqui is the first Moroccan victim, not of Yasmina’s verbal abuse but of the swine flu vaccination which made him take a legal action to sue the minister of health and her government led by al Istiqlal party for medical negligence.
What is so amazing in Yasmina’s health service is the presence of discrepancies between her radical discourse on the TV and her poor health service off TV.
Health service in morocco is inadequate, poor and ‘racist’ using the minister’s language. As immigrants, before going or leaving Morocco, relatives, neighbors or friends are always asking us to bring them medicines from where we are as pharmacies there are full of inefficient medicines and pharmaceutical products from the West are found to meet the desired efficacy than Moroccans’.
The Moroccans tend to take their health for granted seeking a good service at hospitals, but Yasmina Baddou is good at not overcoming natural illness but to overcome El Fassi political disability. The minister put herself in the political avant-garde while saying that she won elections four times with an A+ mark. Anyway Yassmina can win elections with A+ but her service is still agonizing because of the disease ‘nothing works’ in her political party. The prophecy of politics does not lie in winning election but winning public sympathy and wining our sympathy remains in a real answer to the following questions:
-Why patients do not benefit from discount on prescription purchase instead of filling that silly ‘the mutual’ form and wait for few months to get a silly refund after you might even be dead?
-Why over 60 are not exempt from paying any health or pharmaceutical service as in democratic countries?
-Why disabled are not eligible to free medical service including free medications, transport and housing and even to have a basic wage as Disability Living Allowance and Career Allowances for the ones looking after them as in democratic countries? At least this project will remove disabled from begging on Moroccan streets, trains, buses and mosques’ doors particularly these category of rabble citizens who are not belonging to Al Fassi empire did not chose to beg but they are forced to .
- Why, what, who, where and when were the real questions to be answered on 2M channel in lieu of calling Moroccans racists.
To sum up, we are not against the Minister of Health or even Al Fassi power, but we are against the rationing of a poor health service which forces Moroccans to get expired and smuggled Algerian medicines from local stores in order to heal or to visit their local ‘Achab’ (traditional healer with plants) for a cheap remedy to relieve the pain.
As Moroccans, we do not need any verbal challenge as calling us racists; we are not racists, we are patriots and what we need is a practical plan to move our beloved country forward and if the Al Fassi government continues with its philosophy of ‘no-ism’ to every no Al Fassi, they have to be prepared for the defeat on the next elections because the one who sneezes without hanky takes matters into his own hands.
if what was said on some Moroccan online media and others wasn't racist, I don't know what is!! Now, I do think the Minister should have weathered her answered much better. It's worth also to mention that (from I can tell) the health minister is not from Fes, but happens to be married to someone who is and she is only defending an ideological point.
With regards to her record as a minister,and again I don't pretend to know better than others, but I do know that we have to be very realistic in terms of what could be achieved in Morocco in such little time and with such little means. YES, we have to be very very ambitious and shoot for the best but in all faireness let's not just blame everything that's dysfunctional on her or others in other ministries. They certainly have to have clear realistic objectives and be assessed on their perfomance regularly, The performance should not be judged on everthing that's dysfunctional in the system.
Having said all that, I always reading Rachid's articles. keep on the good work.
The AlFassi Tribe and Co are weakening Morocco. Our country is becoming more and more vulnerable because of them. It's high time we reacted to this abuse of power on the part of the prime minister and Co.
Taking about elections is daydreaming. Wake up Ssi Rachid.
I'm sure what mr rachid says here is true , al fassi are dominant , there are qualified moroccans everywhere, they imigratid to ather countries . it's important badou is lawyer and can't know about health , in morocco in the future a driver can be the prime minister in the future like badou.
morocco is destroyed by al fassi , they staudied in france Rachid that you must mention , we studiyd in morocco . degrees from morocco can't take you anywhere.
we need a country of democracy by people.al fassi they arn't from the people , they are from nothing
You mentioned a lot of important tôpics in your article. Health is a crucial one since it's related to people's lives. Unfortunately, everyone knows that there is no health care in Morocco. Truths must be said. And since there is no health care, no ministery is needed. Poor practioners, doctors and nurses, are suffering along with their patients! Services are very very poor, EVERYTHING IS PAID FOR!
Poor people DIE because of some ordinary sicknesses that develop because of shortage of medicine, and because they are poor. Victims of road accidents lose much blood, if they are not killed, before any ambulance could come! I bet Badou herself go to physicians in France when she, or one of hers, needs a consultation. THIS is not exaggeration! They turn to the people only when there is an external danger. Cakes are distributed among Al Fassi and Co exclusively.