That politician who used to adopt unpopular decisions and defiantly ask: “So what!" has been transformed by Moroccan Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane into a model who knew how to produce victory out of defeat, or at least absorb a possible anger and throw the ball far away from the square of culpability. It is likely that he took into account the fact that the problem does not always lie in the irrelevance of the decisions that are shocking to the public – such as increasing the price of gasoline – as much as in the way they are put forward and defended. The late King Hassan II once embarked on a venture to end the housing crisis. He issued a decision to lower the rent by two thirds for people with low-income. However, instead of seeing the poor benefit from such a measure which carried a social character, the owners and speculators on the real estate market stopped renting their houses to people with low incomes. Until this day, the problems affecting housing – which is synonymous to dignity – have not yet been settled and have even escalated. Benkirane was unwilling and unable to confront the speculators or the so-called lobbyists against change in a direct way. Indeed, he saw how the mere publication of lists featuring the names of those who benefitted from the transportation coupons brought a lot of trouble to the government. This marked a warning saying that the path will not be easy and that those rising up in protest, as it was seen in the round of what was dubbed the “the official media reckoning books" are speaking on behalf other bigwigs behind masks. Hence, by choosing to treat the poorer classes that are affected by social injustice in a fair way, he wanted to rally the latter behind him, not to exert any pressures, but to move the confrontations to arenas which he knows expect him to adopt palpable initiatives and not mere sweet-talk. This is the first time that wide segments feel they are getting attention from the government and that their participation in the elections has become purposeful. What Benkirane did was to transform theoretical equations and the controversy surrounding economic and financial reforms into small projects which, may be modest at the level of their cost, but are highly effective in terms of their psychological and social profitability. In that sense, any arguing with him at the level of the difficult decisions – whether they are right or wrong – will be perceived as being against seeing these factions earning more attention. This is exactly where the highest levels of pragmatism lie, in parallel to openness to reality. Before him, no government had ever enabled divorced women and people with low incomes to benefit from monthly financial aid, and no attempt at the level of the social ladder had ever managed to save poor families from displacement and loss through the allocation of direct proceeds from the state's budget. Hence, the current prime minister put feet on politics to allow them to roam the popular neighborhoods and the difficult passages between the belts of poverty, frailty and marginalization that are spread everywhere. The reason why the prime minister probably chose to shift his attention toward the poorer classes - not to openly complain about the placement of mines along the path of his government, but to overcome the shrapnel of the explosions through some sort of an alliance of the deprived - is the fact that the experience, which is still at its beginning, is not desired to become a new tradition, but rather to drown in the management of small wars. And whether the prime minister was saying that the Arab spring had not yet ended to exert pressures where possible, or was doing so out of conviction that the conflict had not yet been settled, his turn toward the camp of the deprived aims at lifting the pot off the burning fire. The mistake of some politicians resides in their distraction by the image of the pot and the fire, knowing that if the boiling were to exceed its limits, everything will burn. It does not matter if this is due to neglect or preoccupation with watching a fictive television series.
