Fez- It seems that Mustapha El Khalfi, Morocco’s Minister of Communication and government spokesman, was either ill-advised or did not realize the seriousness of his words when he compared the high number of soap-operas broadcast TV channel to a “brothel in Mexico.”
Three days after his declaration before the parliament on Tuesday, Khalfi found himself in an uncomfortable situation and was forced to use Twitter to clarify what he meant by this phrase when he talked about the Latin American soap operas served to the Moroccan public TV channels.
“My statement has been altered. This is what gave rise to an attack on a friendly country Mexico, and this attack is unacceptable,” said El Kahlfi on his Twitter account on Friday.
This clarification comes after Mexico formally protested the statement used by the Moroccan Minister, according to Le360.
During a session of oral questions at the House of Representatives on Tuesday, Mustapha El Khalfi slammed Moroccan public TV channels for the high number of Mexican soap-operas that 2M and Al Oula broadcast on a daily basis.
“We need Moroccan Media; Morocco is not Afghanistan or any other country. The problem is not whether Morocco is like Afghanistan, Sudan or Iran, the problem is that there are those who want to turn Morocco [through serials and movies] into a brothel for Mexico,” he said.
This statement risks to cause problem to Morocco’s diplomacy. Mexico is one of the countries that don’t support Morocco’s stance on the Western Sahara dispute and Minister Khalfi words won’t help change things for the better. The question that comes to one’s mind is why the Minister singled out Mexico when it is known that the soap-operas broadcast on Moroccan TV channels are not exclusively Mexicans.
It remains to be seen if the Minister will come out of this controversy unscathed. Already some members of the opposition parties have been quick in slamming a statement that “can cost dearly to Morocco at the diplomatic level.”
“Mr. El Khalfi’s response went beyond the scope of a government response to an opposition MP. It is a sovereign and a friendly country that is being abused and called into question. The Foreign Minister, Salaheddine Mezouar should react to the words pronounced by his colleague,” Driss Lachgar, Secretary General of the USFP was quoted by Quid.ma as saying.
“There is no way one can overlook such words that can cost us diplomatically,” a member of the Party of Authenticity and Modernity (PAM), another opposition party, was quoted by the same source as saying.