Rabat – Aziz Akhannouch, the Secretary General of the National Rally of Independents (RNI), declared on Sunday that members of the political party who get ministerial positions in the government coalition will be working weekends for the Moroccan people.
“We want ministers from the RNI to leave their homes and offices” in order to understand the lives of ordinary Moroccans,” Akhannouch, who also serves as the minister of agriculture and fisheries, said during a regional politburo meeting in Tangier.
The minister emphasized the party’s new focus on citizens and their everyday challenges without invoking “demagoguery.”
The RNI faces strong political competitors in this region, but we do not want to create political enemies,” Akkannouch said, adding that “our sole enemy is the poverty, the unemployment and the marginalization that the region faces.”
In order to achieve the party’s new political goals, the minister said he would reorganize the internal structure of the RNI at local and regional levels in order to increase communication with citizens and draw from the party’s grassroots activists.
The party’s new slogan will be “responsible and serious work,” the newly elected party leader, who inherited the position from Former Foreign Minister Salaheddine Mezouar, said.
In the October 7th elections, the RNI lost 15 seats in the national parliament to the ruling Justice and Development Party (PJD) and the opposition Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM).
Other small and medium-sized parties also saw significant losses in representation – indicating a rising polarization between ruling Islamists and opposition secularists in Moroccan politics.
PJD Head of Government Abdelilah Benkirane has been tasked with forming a new government coalition for the next five years, however it is unclear when members of the new executive branch will be sworn in.
