Political Freedom
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According to BBC Arabic (link in Arabic), Economist published a research that reports the status of Political and democracy freedom in the Middle East. On a scale of 10, the five top most are, Israel - 8.2, Lebanon - 6.55, Morocco - 5.20, Iraq - 5.05 and Palestine - 5.05.
While Jordan scored 4.45, the bottom most were Saudi - 2.80, Syria - 2.80 and Libya - 2.05.
Although Economist research might not be the best one that one can rely on, however, everyone in the region witnessed the democratic reforms in the most troubled countries in the region. That is Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon. Does that mean it is a rule? Of course not! Morocco is not facing hard time if compareed with other countries in the top of that list.
On the other hand, putting Israel aside and looking at the difference between other ranks, you can see that the difference between Lebanon, which is on top of the list, and Libya is almost 4 points. On the other hand, comparing the second best in the list, which is Morocco, with Israel, the difference is 3 points.
IMHO, this makes them all (except for Lebanon) more or less, the same. Yes, they scored above 5 points, but that is not really very significant if you compared them to the rest of the countries in the middle of the list.
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7 Comments on “Political Freedom”
I wonder how Israel manages to be at the top of any “freedom” list in the Middle East when it is depriving Palestinians from the basic freedoms in their own country, which is not Israel.
lol something is seriously wrong about this list. I have serious reservations about morocco and iraq.
Haitham-
When they started constructing this index of freedom, EIU first listed 15 factors which each characterize one dimension of freedom. These 15 factors are:
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Election of head of government, Election of parliament,
Fairness of electoral laws, Right to organise political parties,
Power of elected representatives, Presence of an opposition,
Transparency, Minority participation, Level of corruption,
Freedom of assembly, Independence of the judiciary, Press freedom
Religious freedom. Rule of law, Property rights
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Then for each factor, they evaluated each country on a scale from 1=no freedom to 10=total freedom. Thus for the first factor, Election of head of government, , Morocco, having a KING would get a score of 1 whereas Algeria would get a score of 10, since thay supposedly elect their president. I don’t know how they scored such things as Transparency, which could be anywhere from 1 to 10!
When this was finished, they added the individual factor score for each country, and averaged them to get an overall score for that country.
Thus no country could have an freedom index lower than 1. This means to me that Libya is closer to the bottom than I thought.
One commenter said that they had reservations about Morocco. In fact, looking at all of these factors for Morocco, I think it is about right!
So having a king, score 1, while elected president, score 10. So who is 2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and 9?
When you look under the word freedom in the dictionary the last nation you find under it is israel they dont take into interest the civilians at all and are so quick to put the blame on everyone but themselves. I belive the only fair nation to this date that has respect for themselves and other nations around them is lebanon. PEACE be to all