The RNI Accuses the PAM of Poaching Its Elected Officials Four Weeks Before the Vote

he political bureau of the Rassemblement national des independants met in Rabat on 25 August, in semi-attended form and chaired by Mohamed Chaouki, and put out that same evening a statement that names its adversary in the opening paragraph: the solicitation and the pressure its members of parliament, its elected officials and its territorial officers have met in recent weeks come, it writes, from the Parti authenticite et modernite. The bureau then dwells, with astonishment, on the candidacies of eight people it names, Abdelhay Hartoun, Mohamed El Jammani, Zineb Simou, Otmane Badel, Manal Badel, Bouchra El Ouardi, Abdelhafid El Makouti and Abdelkader El Hadouri, some of them already announced as the party’s own candidates, others still exercising a mandate in its name. It recalls the hybrid transfers seen in the Dakhla region between components of the majority before the circle widened to its own elected officials, and refuses to read them as isolated incidents: the attempts are said to have reached a member of the political bureau itself.

The date is not incidental. The legislative vote is set for 23 September, candidacy filing opens on 31 August, and the two parties this statement sets against each other have governed together since 2021 alongside the Istiqlal. The RNI came out of 2021 with one hundred and two seats, the PAM with eighty-seven; both have spent the summer recruiting, the PAM taking Fouzi Lekjaa into its political bureau in July. The text does not stop at protest: no party, the bureau writes, may grant itself an exceptional position outside the principle of equality between parties, nor manufacture for itself a supposed favor and an anticipated image of results on which the ballot boxes have not yet said their word. It closes on a reminder that Morocco has chosen democracy as a path without return, one that leaves no room for the practices the country has outgrown. The PAM, for its part, did not reply. A deputy left the RNI to join it that same evening, insisting he went without animosity.

Photo: Anass Sedrati, CC BY-SA 4.0.