Rabat – Head of Government, Saad Eddine Othmani, stated in a meeting with the Justice and Development Party’s (PJD) parliamentary caucus, that the process of government formation was done entirely at the level of the party’s General Secretariat, and that it “was not a personal matter.”
Morocco’s Head of Government, Saad Eddine Othmani, explained that the General Secretariat of the PJD endorsed an approach consisting of consulting with all the parties on the Moroccan political scene. He asserted that none of the decisions before or after the consultations were made individually.
In the same vein, Othmani explained that the decision to include the Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP) in the government was made at the level of the General Secretariat of the party:
“We convened another meeting of the General Secretariat and I put it in the picture. It was the General Secretariat that agreed to make the Socialist Union part of the coalition government,” said the Head of Government. He added that he suggested involving a team from the leading members of his party to attend “all the phases of the government formation process.”
On a different note, Othmani pointed out that the party convened a meeting made up of 41 elected members of the National Council and 21 members of the General Secretariat. He informed the attendees that the government would include the USFP. The Head of Government denied categorically allegations that he had said during this meeting that the inclusion of USFP was “a sovereign decision.”
Further, Othmani said that the PJD decided to include the USFP because it sought to “avoid the factors that lead to the obstruction of the government formation” during the negotiations led by Abdelilah Benkirane.
Othmani also admitted in this intervention that the statement of the Royal Cabinet, which announced the dismissal of the previous Head of Government and current Secretary General of the PJD, Abdelilah Benkirane, was “actually a painful event for all of us.” He added that the leading members of the PJD invoked the role of their party as a “servant of the nation” during the subsequent partisan meetings, “despite the pain.”
The Head of Government pointed out that the decision of Benkirane to react positively to his dismissal and look forward to the future is “an act of selflessness that the young members of the party should remember.”
