Rabat, Morocco (TMT)- Morocco’s head of the government, Abdellilah Benkirane, who was invited by the Oujda-section students of the Business School Grande Ecole (known under its French acronym HEM) was forced to end his speech, entitled “An Open Letter to Moroccan Youth,” following a group of teacher trainees mounting an impressive wave of protest in the middle of his speech, before even taking over the stage later on.
Initially, trying to sooth the atmosphere, the Moroccan head of government paused his speech and invited some of them to the stage to echo their anger and “show him proofs that he was corrupt,” especially that their chants were associating him [Benkirane] with corruption.
One of the protesters who was invited to the stage by Benkirane [The young man in the featured image above] said that “I have indeed proofs that show that you are corrupt. What about your son benefiting from a 5000 Dhs scholarship (around US 500$)? Tell us more about it.”
Morocco’s head of the government answered saying that, “Initially, this is a question, not a proof as you are saying. And to answer the question, I would tell you that my son, by name Redouane Benkirane, received the scholarship out of merit. More than that, I was not even aware that he applied for such a scholarship until days after he received it. He even received it way before we won the elections, before I was appointed head of the government.”
Moments after that, the scene turned higgledy-piggledy, and Morocco’s head of the government asked for security reinforcement as protesting students started taking over the stage and destroying seats.
Many Moroccans, on various social media platforms, echoed their anger at this “uncivilized act” from supposedly “Morocco’s future generation teachers, teachers who should set the example of civility and respect,” as leading Moroccan journalist Redouane Ramdani said, knowingly that Ramdani is a staunch critic of the deemed Islamist-government. [WIKILEAKS released few years ago a document revealing that Ramdani received important sums of money to echo the agenda of Morocco’s Makhzen]
“From the videos I saw of what happened, I call this Tbarhich [acting like little kids] not protesting. This is not yet Baltajiya [an Egyptian word that originally means “hatchet men” but it generally means “goons” or “thugs” or “gangs,” who are often hired to attack regime targets], but it is very very close to it,” Ramdani stressed.
The Moroccan Times.
