Morocco’s Elite Offspring: A Test for Justice and Rule of Law

According to Mohamed Choukair, a researcher in social affairs, this phenomenon, which has spread in Morocco, questions the rule of law. He illustrates his point by citing several cases involving the "sons of the elite". He cites the example of the husband of a princess who shot at a police officer without being arrested or tried, because his criminal irresponsibility was justified by mental disorders. He also mentions the case of an accident involving the daughter of an advisor to the late King Hassan II. She had run over a traffic police officer. She was arrested thanks to the intervention of the director of Moroccan security, who insisted that legal measures be taken. But she did not serve her full sentence before being released. In the meantime, she had been granted a royal pardon.

If these cases, whose protagonists are the children of the influential economic, political and administrative elite, are generally closely followed by public opinion and the press, it is because they constitute a "thermometer" of the independence of the judiciary, as well as the degree of anchoring of the institutions of a state of law in a country where laws are applied without taking into account the social origin, political influence or economic fortune of the perpetrator of the crime, explains Choukair.

The "son of the elite" or the "spoiled rich child" generally relies on the wealth he and his family possess in his interaction with others, particularly with the "children of the poor", comments a researcher in the social behavioral sciences, nuancing that this observation does not apply to all "sons of the elite". To support his argument, he points out that there are children from wealthy families who respect the law, show humility and easily integrate into the social fabric, including among the economically and financially most modest social strata.

Social, even psychological, behavior explains the negative vision that the "son of the elite" has of others, because he thinks he has the right to despise and dominate them, whether through material force or the purchase of consciences, solely to escape justice when he commits offenses, misdemeanors or crimes, he added, insisting that a healthy society is one where social classes fade away, where there are neither children of notables nor children of the poor when it comes to applying the law.