A Royal Premier

When he feels the need to meditate, King Hassan goes to the mountains. He was there last week, at Ifrane, in a grey stone palace surrounded by ilex trees, where he could picnic with friends beside a brook or cast March brown flies to the rainbow trout flashing in the clear water.

What was bothering Hassan was the state of the nation, which was dreadful. Business was stagnant. Half the Moroccan work force was underemployed, and one man in ten had no work at all. In the largest city, Casablanca, student mobs last March battled police and soldiers and ran up a death toll of 200. Foreign reserves were dangerously low, while inflation soared, and crates of furniture clogged the docksides as some 40,000 exasperated foreigners prepared to leave for good. In Parliament, half a dozen political parties bickered endlessly--in two years of debating, the House of Representatives has managed to pass only four laws.

At last Hassan came down from the mountains and sat at a mahogany desk in his Rabat palace to announce his decision over a nationwide broadcast. "The country cries out for a strong, stable government," he declared, proclaiming an end--or at least suspension--to Morocco's unique two-year experiment in democracy. With that, Hassan sent the police around to lock the doors of Parliament, then fired the fumbling coalition government of Preimer Ahmed Bahnini.

Next day Hassan formed a new Cabinet of 20 ministers with himself as Premier and pledged "resolute action" and "radical change." Though notably lacking in austerity himself, Hassan was prepared to impose it upon the nation, as well as a new budget and a new three-year plan. He promised new national elections and a return to "efficient parliamentary life"--some time also in the future.

Only the hidebound Istiqlal Party opposed the royal move, and its objections were, typically, embedded in a 3,000-word communique that was both verbose and confused. The other parties, mostly leftist and vaguely socialist, backed the King with a few reservations because they were sympathetic to the idea of authoritarian rule. Speaking for the financial community, Casablanca's daily Maroc-Informations said that businessmen "will be able to talk cogently with men of real authority now that the parliamentary masquerade is ended."

All King Hassan need do now is create national unity, stability and prosperity, something that has eluded every government since Morocco won its independence from France nine years ago.

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