Morocco’s coalition-building season produced an awkward moment on Saturday, after Istiqlal party leader Nizar Baraka was forced to publicly correct a claim he had made just hours earlier about a rival party’s position on joining the next government.
Speaking at an extraordinary session of Istiqlal’s national council in Sale, Baraka acknowledged that the information he had received regarding the outcome of the Authenticity and Modernity Party’s (PAM) own council meeting did not, in fact, match the decision the party had actually taken. Earlier that day, Baraka had told reporters that PAM’s leadership had rejected the idea of the National Rally of Independents (RNI) joining the incoming cabinet, a statement that triggered swift pushback from RNI figures and sparked a wave of commentary online.
The confusion came at a particularly delicate moment: RNI separately confirmed its own readiness to take part in the government that will be led by Fatima Zahra El Mansouri, named earlier in the day as Morocco’s next head of government and the first woman to hold the post. With post-election consultations between parties still underway, every signal about who will sit at the cabinet table is being parsed closely by political insiders and the public alike.
Baraka’s walk-back highlights just how fluid and sensitive the bargaining has become as Morocco’s main parties try to lock in a workable majority following the 2026 legislative elections. Coalition talks of this kind traditionally hinge on informal soundings between party leaderships before anything is confirmed on the record, and a single garbled message relayed between delegations can quickly snowball into a public dispute, as Saturday’s episode demonstrated. For El Mansouri, the incident is also an early test of how she will manage relations between prospective partners whose rivalries predate her own appointment.
Analysts following the process note that the stakes go beyond personalities: the shape of the eventual coalition will determine how much legislative room the new government has to pursue the economic and social reforms it campaigned on. Baraka, for his part, urged fellow party leaders to prioritize clarity over political point-scoring while the talks continue, a call that underscores how fragile the current phase of negotiations remains just days after the vote.
