Moroccan Opposition Leader Warns of Potential Protests Amid Government Criticism

"They (the three coalition parties) couldn’t even go out to tell the Moroccans to be patient... They don’t know how to communicate and say that the onion is scarce," he said at a meeting of the PJD parliamentary group on Friday evening in Rabat, thus criticizing the communication of Akhannouch’s team. The Islamist leader and former prime minister claims to have received "several complaints from citizens who no longer benefit from RAMED despite their precarious situation, or even some who no longer receive widow’s allowances."

At this rate, Abdelilah Benkirane fears a remake of the "February 20 Movement", a protest movement that appeared in Morocco on February 20, 2011, following the wave of protests and revolutions in other countries in North Africa and the Middle East known as the "Arab Spring". "February 20 can come back, and the government has not kept its promises. We can’t put everything on the back of the war in Ukraine when the government’s management suffers from several shortcomings," warned the Islamist leader, quoted by the Arabic-language website Goud.ma. According to him, the government is "lacking in trust and cohesion" between its components.