Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri reached out to PJD chief Abdelilah Benkirane on Tuesday evening and proposed a meeting as she prepares to open talks on Morocco’s next government—an invitation he accepted despite his party having already chosen the opposition benches.
Benkirane received a telephone call from the newly appointed Head of Government “for a meeting to communicate,” the PJD said on its official website late on Tuesday.
He welcomed the request and left it to El Mansouri to propose a date.
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The brief exchange puts the two leaders across the table barely days after Benkirane drew one of the clearest lines of the post-election scramble.
A day after the Sept 23 vote, the PJD secretary-general ruled out joining a government headed by PAM, saying there was “absolutely no room” for his party to serve under its longtime political rival.
The matter was subsequently put before the PJD National Council in Bouznika on Saturday, where around 200 members unanimously backed the party leadership’s decision to sit in opposition.
The party returned 54 MPs in last week’s election, up sharply from its 13 seats in 2021, making it the fourth-largest bloc in the new House.
Benkirane has shown no sign of reopening the government question. Since the National Council vote, he has said the PJD would mount a “reasonable and strong” opposition rather than a populist one, according to material published by the party.
El Mansouri is talking to him nevertheless.
PAM’s political bureau gave her the go-ahead on Tuesday evening to begin consultations on Wednesday, only hours after King Mohammed VI appointed her Head of Government and tasked her with forming a cabinet.
Mehdi Bensaïd, a fellow member of PAM’s collective leadership, said the talks would proceed according to the parties’ ranking and strength in the House, but made clear that PAM did not intend to skip those that had chosen the other side of the aisle.
“We’re going to talk to everyone,” he said.
PAM won 97 seats in the 395-member House, 101 short of the 198 needed for an absolute majority. The RNI, its partner in the outgoing government, has 66 seats, while Istiqlal has 65 and has yet to settle whether it will return to government.
The PJD comes next with 54. Its decision to sit out the coalition narrows El Mansouri’s options without preventing the two sides from talking. Tuesday night’s call suggests that the first round will range beyond prospective allies as the new Head of Government takes the measure of the House produced by the Sept 23 vote.
