Media opens King's wallet

A Moroccan magazine, testing the limits of press freedom in the Muslim country, has disclosed King Mohammed earns US$50,000 ($71,000) a month and his court has annual expenses of US$277 million.

TelQuel has a reputation for taking on sensitive social and political issues, with articles on homosexuality, drug addiction and trafficking.

The 12-page dossier on royal finances in the French-language weekly is unprecedented in Morocco and probably in the Arab world.

The magazine's leader page said: "Although there is nothing secret about it, the budget of the monarchy frightens Moroccans. Neither the media nor parliamentarians dare yet to study it too closely."

TelQuel noted the court's annual budget traditionally obtains approval in Parliament after cursory review.

It said although the king earned US$50,000 a month, much less than a chief executive at a major Western company, the US$277 million annual expenses for the royal court accounted for the pay and costs of 1100 people.

Such figures are never discussed in Morocco. TelQuel editor Ahmed Benchemsi said the sums had been known to "maybe 50 people in the kingdom" before the article.

Even members of Parliament shy from examining the court's expenses.

"We dare not even mention the words 'royal budget' during the debate on the draft budget," TelQuel quoted one member of Parliament as saying. "As to discussing it - I won't even say criticising it - this is completely out of the question."

TelQuel has taken on the monarchy before. In November, it published a cartoon of the king, an exceptional move among the largely docile media that views the monarchy as sacred.

So far, the palace has remained silent on TelQuel's bold steps.

King Mohammed, 41, has been trying to reform and modernise Morocco since he ascended the throne in 1999 after the death of his autocratic father, King Hassan, who ruled for 38 years.

Benchemsi said the loosening of Government control over the media in the past five years had left many journalists unclear about how far they could go and where the red lines still remained.

"Since 1999, you can say anything you want in Morocco, barring insults. People are just having problems coming to terms with that," he said.

The new tolerance was slow and uneven around the country.

An example was the jailing on December 13 of a journalist who helped a TelQuel reporter research a report on drug trafficking in the northern Rif mountains.

The Paris-Based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders called the imprisonment of Mohamed Bouhcini in Ouezzane "totally unacceptable" and an "attempt to intimidate journalists by manipulation of the judicial system".

Benchemsi said: "The problem in Ouezzane is they [local officials] haven't a clue of where we are now. They still live in 1972."

- REUTERS