Hasan II of Morocco
Al-Hasan ibn Muhammad or Hasan II (Rabat, July 9, 1929-Ib., July 23, 1999) was King of Morocco from 1961 to his death. He was the second son of Mohamed V, first sultan and later king of Morocco. His mother was the second wife of his father, Lalla Abla bint Tahar, titled Um Sidi (mother of the heir).
Biography
He was sent into exile in Madagascar by the French authorities in 1953 along with his father King Mohamed V, although he was allowed to return in 1955, when France decided to end the Moroccan Protectorate. In February 1956, just after independence, he was appointed by his father as Chief of the Royal Armed Forces Corps. In 1957 he was officially named Crown Prince. In that same year he replaced his father in the visit to the US During the disturbances between 1958 and 1959, he led the repression against the Riffians in the Rif mountains. He was proclaimed prince in 1957, and became king after his father's death in 1961.
In March 1965, demonstrations by high school students protesting against a law that limited the age of admission to secondary schools were violently repressed: hundreds of young people were murdered in a few days. His conservative government strengthened the Alaouite dynasty, and thanks to the & # 34; Green March & # 34; through which he managed to get the Spanish to cede the territory of Western Sahara that was divided between Morocco and Mauritania by the Madrid agreements.
He set in motion a parliamentary system in which he, however, had many prerogatives, and where the Majzen, or traditional caste linked to the king (equivalent to the old European courts), functioned as a parallel state. In practice, the political system that he governed and that he later bequeathed to his son was more like an absolute monarchy than a European-type constitutional monarchy, with the addition that the royal family was the direct owner of much of the land, industries and resources of the country. During his reign there was a fierce political repression under which several hundred people disappeared. After his death, his successor had to echo the social demands on the matter and create institutional mechanisms for investigation and financial compensation for the victims.
He suffered two coup attempts (the 1971 attempt and the 1972 attempt) from which he emerged unharmed in an almost miraculous way, which was used to create a certain aura of a holy character or person chosen by God (in addition to being a king he was a prince of the believers, a title that historically corresponds to the caliphs). On one occasion, the conspirators (led by the monarch's right-hand man, General Mohammed Ufqir) were so sure that he had not survived that the proclamation of the republic was announced on the country's radios.
Foreign Policy
In diplomatic matters, it is close to the United States without being in direct opposition to the Soviet Union. He also took an ambiguous attitude to the conflicts between Israel and some Arab countries. In 1965, he recorded for the Mossad the minutes of a secret meeting of Arab leaders to assess their military capabilities, which would be crucial for Israel during the six-day war. On the other hand, in 1973, he sent a contingent to the Golan to fight alongside the Syrians during the October 1973 war. He suspended Morocco's accession to the Organization of African Unity and came into conflict with the president of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara, for his decision to recognize the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.
He had very good relations with France, including with part of its media and financial elite. Thus, in 1988, the contract for the Hassan II Mosque, a sizeable project financed by compulsory contributions, was awarded to his friend Francis Bouygues, one of the most powerful French businessmen. His image in France was damaged after the publication in 1990 of Notre ami le roi, by Gilles Perrault, in which the writer described the conditions of detention in the Tazmamart prison, the repression of opponents from the left and Sahrawis, the political assassinations, but also the social situation and the poverty in which the majority of Moroccans live.
Personal Life
.jpg)
He had been married since 1961 with two wives, Lalla Latifa Hammou (mother of the princes), and a cousin of hers, Lalla Fatima bint Qaid Ould Hassan Amhourak (not having offspring from this marriage). His remains rest in the Mausoleum of Mohamed V, located on the esplanade of the Hassan Tower in Rabat, next to the sarcophagus of his father and that of his brother, Moulay Abdellah.
Death
On July 14, 1999, Hassan II made his last public appearance when he attended France's July 14 military parade as a guest. On July 23, 1999, at 16:30 (GMT), Hassan II was declared dead of a myocardial infarction by the CHU Ibn Sina Hospital in Rabat, he was hospitalized that same day for acute interstitial pneumonitis, he was 70 years old. A national funeral was held for him in Rabat, with more than forty heads of state in attendance, most notably Bill Clinton, Jacques Chirac, Yasser Arafat, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Abdullah II of Jordan, Ehud Barak, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, Hosni Mubarak, Juan Carlos I, Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Yaber Al-Sabah, Hafez al-Assad and the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan.
He was buried in a wooden coffin in the Mausoleum of Mohamed V. During Hassan's funeral, his coffin was carried by the new King Mohammed VI, his brother Prince Moulay Rachid and his cousin Moulay Hicham, it was covered with a red cloth, on which the Shahada, an Islamic testimony of faith, is inscribed in golden script. His first son, Mohammed VI, was enthroned and became de jure King of Morocco a week after Hassan's death.
Political experience
King Hassan II began his career in politics at a fairly early age. He was a significant support for his father Mohamed V in all acts, especially at the time of the protectorate. Hassan II was unconditionally supporting his father to achieve the independence of Morocco. So much so that they had to exile him together with his father, first in Corsica, and then in Madagascar. This act motivated great waves of violence and armed struggle by supporters of independence. All this was increased when France appointed Mohammed Ben Arafa Sultan of Morocco, giving him the same prerogatives as King Mohamed V.
In 1953 the protests intensified gradually due to the exile of Hassan II and his father, to such an extent that the Sultan was forced to end the period of exile of Mohamed V and Prince Hassan II. Hassan II at that time was the one who was in charge of the official communications and the translation of the messages that his father issued in writing.
Mohamed V died on March 3, 1961, and therefore, Hassan II was proclaimed the new King of Morocco. All this happened at a time when the international scene was divided between two great forces: on the one hand, the Communist Bloc; and on the other, the Western Bloc. Later, Hassan II was in favor of the second block.
Its first Constitution of 1962 "does not pronounce (...) on the organization of powers in the State." The new sovereign places his trust in a series of experts; the result was the reduction of "Parliament's powers". The new Magna Carta caused wear and tear between the Istiqlal and UNFP (National Union of Popular Forces) parties, thus strengthening Hassan II.
For Abdallah Laroui, “the great hopes that had accompanied the struggle for the return of the exiled king and for independence (…) were over. Instead of the long-awaited modernization, there was full-fledged traditionalization.”
“The traditional majzen, the one despised by both the Protectorate officials and the nationalists, was the one who progressively took the lead; from its initial urban and civil condition, it progressively showed its rural and military character”.
Regarding domestic politics, Hassan II never accepted the existence of a single political party. More than anything, because the Istiqlal Party came out of the War of Independence very strengthened and enjoyed indisputable popularity in the Kingdom of Morocco. With which, his intention to create a multiparty policy in Morocco arose out of fear of the Istiqlal Party, which was putting the permanence of the monarchy at risk. On the other hand, Hassan II's relationship with the opposition was tense. To balance this relationship, Hassan II paved the way for the construction of new liberal and right-wing parties, which the opposition would later call administrative parties.
Between the sixties and eighties the political scene was very tense, especially between the opposition and the monarchy. So much so that Hassan II was forced to use force, what was then known as the iron hand, which gave rise to numerous violations of Human Rights. The War of the Sands, the conflict that pitted Morocco against Algeria in October 1963, hid among Hassan II's territorial ambitions a series of "border incidents, and the repression that has reached all Moroccan progressive popular organizations". For example, the case of Mehdi Ben Barka, an activist and dissident of the Hassan II regime who died under strange circumstances in the most emblematic episodes of Moroccan history known as the Years of Lead.
The crisis situation in 1965 led to protests in the big cities, where the Army ended up intervening to dissolve the protesters. The political parties do not agree, and Hassan II "opts to suspend Parliament and the Constitution establishing the state of emergency on June 7, 1965". In these circumstances, the monarch will gradually diminish the power of political parties and unions. “To please the traditionalists, and the Salafis (…), he made Islam the state religion (…). In order to win over the (...) left, he guaranteed the right to strike, recognized the right to work and education ”, despite the low viability of the project. The 1970 Constitution increased "the powers of the Executive" and marginalized the role of Parliament.
In 1972, Hassan II will once again draw up a new Magna Carta, and will try to hold on to a nationalist discourse to reconcile with the population, focusing on old objectives such as the "recovery of Western Sahara". This issue will be a element of cohesion between the king and the political parties, since some of these, previously prohibited, have regained legality, and the monarch will reinforce his idea of "guarantor of the territorial integrity of Morocco in its authentic borders".
In the 1990s, given the delicate economic situation that Morocco was going through, King Hassan II opened channels of dialogue with the opposition in order to unite efforts between political parties and monarchical institutions. As a consequence of this initiative, in 1998 a new government was built whose prime minister was Abderrahmane Youssoufi, handpicked by Hassan II.
Foreign policy in the ideology of Hassan II
Hassan II's political vision has notably marked Morocco's diplomatic behavior at the international level. His perception of the world and what was happening in it formed the parameters of Morocco's foreign policy. His decisions were, as expected, indisputable because he enjoyed three great powers: economic power, religious power, and political power.
Hassan II's personal touch in foreign policy —very different from that of his father Mohamed V, by the way— became more and more palpable as Morocco opened up on the international political scene with Western countries as well as with the arab countries. Hassan II, responding to a question regarding his foreign policy, confessed that he was trying to undertake new strategies and policies different from those known in some countries of the Maghreb and the East. However, Hassan II recognized that what he made of him was different from what his father did because his father had little experience in foreign policy and that it was a field highly restricted by the colonizer.
To better understand how Hassan II constituted his personal vision of conducting foreign policy, one would have to go back to the experiences he had before coming to the throne. Relatively few crown princes were lucky enough to experience first-hand the duties of a king before becoming one. Hassan II, barely fourteen years old, accompanied Mohamed V in his meetings with the great officials of the French protectorate. And, curiously, in 1943 he participated, despite his early age, in the Casablanca conference organized in order to plan a European strategy for Allied operation during World War II. Great leaders such as: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle and Henri Giraud were present at this conference. The latter allowed Hassan II to form an idea about the tension and conflict that existed between different Western countries and how they managed it. It was there in those conferences where Hassan II realized that all international relations depended fundamentally on two aspects: the military force and the economic interests of each intervening country.
Sons of Hasan II
- Princess Lalla Meryem.
- King Mohamed VI.
- Princess Lalla Asma.
- Princess Lalla Hasna.
- Prince Moulay Rachid.
Honorary Distinctions
Moroccan honorary distinctions
Grand Master of the Order of Muhammad.
Grand Master of the Order of the Fight for Independence.
Grand Master of the Order of Fidelity.
Grand Master of the Order of Throne.
Grand Master of the Military Merit Order.
Grand Master of the Order of Civil Merit.
Grand Master of the Alauí Order.
Grand Master of the Order of Prosperity.
Grand Master of the Order of the Celus.
Grand Master of the Order of Rescue.
Grand Master of the Labour Order
Grand Master of the Order of Sports Merit.
Grand Master of the Order of Intellectual Efficiency.
.gif){kind=small}
.gif){kind=small}
.gif){kind=small}
.svg){kind=small}
.gif){kind=small}
.gif){kind=small}
.gif){kind=small}
.gif){kind=small}
.gif){kind=small}
_Ribbon.Bar.gif){kind=small}
Spanish honorary distinctions
Knight of the necklace of the Royal and Distinguished Order of Charles III (02/06/1979).
Knight of the collar of the Civil Order of Alfonso X el Sabio (22/09/1989).
