The full speech in english.

Morocco's Minister of Economy and Finance Salaheddine Mezouar will be the keynote speaker at a presentation hosted by
NASDAQ, on Thursday, May 26th, 2011, at the NASDAQ in Times Square. The presentation will focus on geopolitics and
economics, highlighting Morocco’s economic opportunities, its role as the gateway to Africa, and its current economic
and political state of affairs.

The Campaign for Referendum Day has already started, and it is more than likely the next couple of weeks are going to be
ugly, with Moroccans brocading others as traitors and un-Moroccans while others are branded as Makhzenian puppets.
At least we are sure of one thing: our society is deeply divided; Whatever our political opinions -however firm they
might be- there is hate for those who do not share our beliefs, and there is active hostility to those who try to voice
them. Such a rift between dissidence and conservatism is wide enough for the regime not to interfere, or at least not to
do so publicly; they have now their minions to do the ugly shore of suppressing and harassing dissidence, while keeping
up the decorum of democratic debate. Not to mention the earlier communiqués released by our significant partners (the
European Union‘s Commissioner Catherine Ashton and United States Department of State Secretary Hillary Clinton, among
others) all supporting and praising our unique experience in MENA region. Yes, it is depressing for the dissidents in
Morocco not to find support or forum -but the social media- to voice their opinions.

In the face of the extraordinary revolutions of 2011, the conservative monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)
have gone into self-preservation mode, bolstering their defensive capabilities, recalibrating their security alliances,
and expanding their partnerships. The counter-revolutionary chieftain of the club, Saudi Arabia, has taken the lead in
organizing a patterned response to what it perceives as a populist and doctrinal attack on the existing order. 
It is in this context that the GCC opened its institutional doors to Jordan and Morocco, which happen to share the same
religious identification and threat perception and had long sought the financial benefits that come with GCC membership.
Reliable allies of the GCC, the Jordanian and Moroccan monarchies have stationed thousands of security officers in the
Gulf for decades –

To those of us who are concerned about the evolution of political development in the last 60 years in the developing
world, and the current political changes taking place in North Africa and the Middle East, one important question is
this:  Can we modernize without losing the best of our traditions?  I will try to shed some light on what the social
sciences have been defining as political and economic development and modernization for us to understand the
implications of where we are heading on this path to “modernization.”