Mohamed Yacoubi has been dismissed as administrative director of the RNI’s parliamentary group office in the House of Councillors, with a source close to the group attributing the decision to his friendship with senior PAM figure Fouzi Lekjaa and accusations that he failed to support RNI candidates in Berkane during the Sept 23 election.
The dismissal letter was signed by Mohamed Al-Bakouri, head of the RNI group in the House of Councillors, the source told Le360.
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Reached by telephone, Yacoubi confirmed that he had been dismissed but declined to give further details.
The reasons cited by the source put the decision squarely in the aftermath of an election campaign in which relations between RNI and PAM became increasingly strained, despite the two parties having governed together since 2021.
Lekjaa emerged as one of PAM’s prominent figures during the campaign, while Berkane was among the constituencies where competition between the former coalition partners played out at the ballot box.
The episode comes just as the two parties have returned to the negotiating table.
RNI was the first party received on Wednesday by Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri after King Mohammed VI appointed the PAM leader Head of Government and tasked her with forming a new cabinet. The meeting reopened political contact between the two former governing partners after the sharp exchanges of the campaign.
RNI president Mohamed Chouki said after those talks that his party had congratulated El Mansouri and expressed its determination to help her in her task. He did not announce whether RNI would join the government she is assembling.
Yacoubi’s dismissal, meanwhile, points to unfinished business from the campaign inside the RNI itself.
