The value of Abdellatif Ouahbi\u2019s interview with Alghad is not limited to his direct answers about the elections. Its greater significance lies in what the Justice Minister reveals, deliberately or otherwise, about the period beginning the day after the vote.<\/p>\n
The interview is therefore better read from a third, national journalistic position: neither defending the Authenticity and Modernity Party, nor opposing the Justice and Development Party, nor reading politics through the immediate interests of political parties. Ouahbi\u2019s statements are material to be examined for what they affirm, what they suggest, and what they still do not establish.<\/p>\n
The official results placed the Authenticity and Modernity Party first with 97 seats, followed by the National Rally of Independents with 66 and the Istiqlal Party with 65, while the Justice and Development Party returned with 54 seats. Turnout stood at 38.08%, compared with 50.86% in 2021 and 42.27% in 2016.<\/p>\n
That is where the interview begins to become more than a conventional post-election conversation.<\/p>\n
In the opening minutes, Ouahbi says his party expected the result and had been working toward it for several years. That is a natural political answer from the leader of a party that has emerged at the top of the vote.<\/p>\n
But he quickly broadens the frame.<\/p>\n
He describes a society in which a younger generation is demanding modernity while part of the population remains attached to authenticity, the monarchy, history and traditions.<\/p>\n
This is not yet a government program. It is closer to a description of the political space in which the PAM wants to operate.<\/p>\n
The party that finished first does not have a majority of its own in the House of Representatives. With 97 seats out of 395, the formation of the next government will necessarily require negotiations with other political forces.<\/p>\n
That gives particular weight to Ouahbi\u2019s repeated reference to finding \u201cpoints of agreement\u201d between parties. He says the PAM will open dialogue with forces that respect the Constitution and that an opposition must retain its place.<\/p>\n
The more revealing moment comes when the interview turns to the Justice and Development Party.<\/p>\n
The party that won only 13 seats in 2021 returns this time with 54. That increase, by itself, does not establish that Moroccans collectively \u201creturned\u201d to the PJD, nor that the result represents a single movement among the middle class. Those interpretations would require more detailed electoral and social evidence.<\/p>\n
The number itself, however, is clear.<\/p>\n
A party that emerged from the 2021 election severely weakened has returned with enough parliamentary representation to participate in negotiations and influence the balance of forces in the new legislature.<\/p>\n
Ouahbi does not describe that return as something that needs to be contained. He says Morocco contains both conservative and modernist constituencies and that, in his view, there are no red lines preventing dialogue with the PJD as long as there is agreement on the political system, democracy, freedoms and human rights.<\/p>\n
That is not an announcement of a coalition.<\/p>\n
Nothing in the interview establishes that a future PAM-PJD alliance will be formed. But the statement does reveal something about the political language being presented after the election: Ouahbi is emphasizing programmatic agreement rather than an absolute ideological boundary.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the most revealing sentence in the interview is not the one about the PJD. It is Ouahbi\u2019s reference to the middle class.<\/p>\n
He argues that the middle class exerted \u201cstrong pressure\u201d through the ballot box. He links this pressure to prices, fuel, education, healthcare, social protection and living standards.<\/p>\n
That is Ouahbi\u2019s political interpretation of the election, not an independently established electoral finding. The distinction matters.<\/p>\n
Yet his interpretation intersects with several issues that were prominent during the electoral debate.<\/p>\n
The election produced a PAM victory, a strong PJD return and, at the same time, a substantial decline in turnout. Employment, wages, prices, healthcare, education and housing were among the issues repeatedly present in the broader discussion surrounding the vote.<\/p>\n
That still does not make \u201cmiddle-class anger\u201d a sufficient explanation for the result.<\/p>\n
Because a 38.08% turnout rate also means that a large share of citizens did not participate in the electoral choice at all.<\/p>\n
When we speak of \u201cthe voter\u2019s voice,\u201d therefore, we need to specify whose voice we mean: those who voted, not Moroccan society as a whole.<\/p>\n
This may be one of the questions the interview did not have enough time to explore.<\/p>\n
Does the change in the parliamentary map reflect a transformation in voters\u2019 political choices, or does it also reflect a transformation in the size of political participation itself?<\/p>\n
The official number is clear. Turnout fell from 50.86% in 2021 to 38.08% in 2026.<\/p>\n
The explanation for that decline, however, cannot simply be reduced to the observation that abstention exists everywhere in the world.<\/p>\n
The Moroccan question remains specific: what does a new parliamentary configuration mean when the base of citizens participating in the vote has contracted?<\/p>\n
The Justice and Development Party\u2019s result also deserves to be examined without rushing to conclusions.<\/p>\n
Thirteen seats in 2021. Fifty-four in 2026.<\/p>\n
Those numbers alone do not prove that Moroccan society as a whole changed political direction. Nor do they establish that the return resulted from a single social group or a single political cause.<\/p>\n
But the number unquestionably changes the parliamentary equation.<\/p>\n
The PJD returns to a position from which it can negotiate and influence the balance of forces in the new House.<\/p>\n
In that context, Ouahbi\u2019s statement that he sees no red lines with the party becomes particularly significant, especially because his own party finished first.<\/p>\n
A distinction must nevertheless be maintained between the possibility of political dialogue and the existence of an actual coalition.<\/p>\n
The first was explicitly mentioned by Ouahbi.<\/p>\n
The second has not been established.<\/p>\n
Ouahbi becomes noticeably more cautious.<\/p>\n
Article 47 of Morocco\u2019s Constitution provides that the King appoints the Head of Government from the political party that comes first in elections to the House of Representatives, on the basis of the election results.<\/p>\n
Since the PAM finished first, the discussion over the next Head of Government therefore takes place within that constitutional framework.<\/p>\n
Ouahbi nevertheless refuses to present a name or an indication as a certainty. He refers to several names circulating publicly and emphasizes that the choice belongs to the King and is connected to the vision of the next phase.<\/p>\n
That caution matters precisely because it prevents the interview from becoming a premature announcement about who will lead the next government.<\/p>\n
Names are already circulating in public debate. But media speculation about a name is not the same thing as an institutional decision.<\/p>\n
Turning names such as Fouzi Lekjaa or Fatima Zahra Mansouri into certainty at this stage would therefore go beyond what the available facts establish.<\/p>\n
In the final part of the interview, Ouahbi returns to the field most directly connected to his responsibilities: justice.<\/p>\n
He speaks about digitization, remote services, changing laws, women\u2019s status, divorced women, parity and reform of the Family Code.<\/p>\n
At that point, the interview changes character.<\/p>\n
Ouahbi is no longer speaking only about an election that has ended. He is describing a legislative and judicial agenda that he intends to pursue.<\/p>\n
That agenda has to be tested against concrete files.<\/p>\n
Ouahbi had already defended strengthening the role of the enforcement judge and emphasized the effectiveness of judicial decisions and their actual implementation.<\/p>\n
The journalistic question, therefore, is not whether Ouahbi wants to reform the justice system. He says clearly that he does.<\/p>\n
The more precise questions are elsewhere: What kind of justice system? Through which laws? On what timetable? With what safeguards? And, above all, how will digitization and remote services actually affect citizens dealing with the enforcement of a judgment or with an ordinary judicial procedure?<\/p>\n
That is probably where genuine journalistic follow-up begins.<\/p>\n
If the Alghad interview is to be read from the position of a national journalistic \u201cthird party,\u201d it should not be reduced to the question of who won and who lost.<\/p>\n
The results placed the PAM first, brought the PJD back strongly into Parliament, kept the RNI and Istiqlal among the leading political forces, while turnout declined significantly.<\/p>\n
These three elements have to remain together.<\/p>\n
The rise of one party cannot be analyzed while ignoring turnout. The PJD\u2019s return cannot automatically be treated as a verdict on Moroccan society as a whole. And Ouahbi\u2019s interpretation of the middle class cannot be turned into a definitive electoral explanation without more detailed social and electoral data.<\/p>\n
What he says about the middle class, prices, healthcare and education may provide an important starting point for the next phase. Its real significance, however, will become visible in the public policies that follow the formation of the government.<\/p>\n
This is where journalism differs from political parties.<\/p>\n
A party can say: we understood the message.<\/p>\n
The press has to keep asking: Which message exactly? Who expressed it? How many voters expressed it? And what can actually be demonstrated?<\/p>\n
The election is over. The political test now begins: How will 97 seats become a governing majority? How will the victorious forces deal with the PJD\u2019s return? What will the next government do about prices, public services and the expectations of the middle class? And will the justice reforms mentioned by Ouahbi become laws, procedures and measurable services?<\/p>\n
Those questions are neither opposition to the next government nor support for it.<\/p>\n
They are simply the distance Moroccan journalism needs in order not to move, after the announcement of the results, from observing the election to becoming part of the political narratives built around it.<\/p>\n