Morocco’s former head of government Saad Eddine El Othmani moved swiftly on Friday to shut down a growing controversy, issuing a categorical denial of claims that a royal advisor had subjected him to abusive phone calls. The rebuttal, posted on his personal Facebook page, came hours after journalist Slimane Raissouni made the allegations in a widely circulated video.
Raissouni had claimed that El Othmani, who led Morocco’s government from 2017 to 2021, received insult-laden calls from an advisor to King Mohammed VI in the aftermath of the 2020 tripartite agreement normalizing ties between Morocco, Israel and the United States. The claims were also tied to the public condemnation of that normalization deal by the Unity and Reform Movement, an organization close to the Justice and Development Party (PJD), which El Othmani once led.
« I have never, at any point, heard an offensive word from any royal advisor, whether directed at me personally, at the PJD, or at anyone else, » El Othmani wrote in his statement, describing the allegations as « pure fabrication, entirely without basis in truth. »
The former premier went further, insisting that his institutional dealings with the King’s advisors throughout his years in office were consistently defined by « mutual respect and a spirit of cooperation. » His remarks come against a backdrop of persistent, often unverified rumors about the inner workings of Morocco’s political establishment, rumors that tend to spread quickly on social media.
El Othmani characterized Raissouni’s video as an exercise in « fabrication and media manipulation, » arguing it was designed to cast doubt on the nature of institutional relations within the Moroccan state. He urged the public not to be swayed by unverified narratives that, in his words, « bear no relation to the truth. »
The episode reignites a familiar debate in Moroccan politics over how relations between the Royal Palace and successive political leaders are portrayed and discussed in public discourse, five years after a normalization deal that continues to divide segments of the country’s Islamist political class.
