In the La Tour Hassan hotel, in Rabat, the lobby suddenly buzzed with excitement, mid-afternoon on Wednesday, December 13. "He's here!" a voice exclaimed. Nicolas Sarkozy, fresh from the airport, walked through the five-star establishment's doors as rain poured down on the Moroccan capital. "He brought the water," said a lady who had come especially to catch a glimpse of the former French president (2007-2012). A few days ago, supplication prayers were performed in all the country's mosques, as is tradition here in the event of persistent drought.

Sarkozy's last public appearance in the kingdom was in 2019, when he addressed the summer conference of the Moroccan employers' organization in Casablanca. This time, the former head of state came at the invitation of the Development and Solidarity Council, a think-tank founded by the entrepreneur Mohamed Benamour, who owns La Tour Hassan, a century-old Moorish-style luxury hotel and a key venue for business meetings in the capital.

In one of the hotel's reception rooms, in front of some 200 people including his "friend" and former minister Eric Besson, who has presided over the Moroccan subsidiary of the Swiss group SICPA since 2019, Sarkozy came to present his latest book, Le Temps des Combats ("The Time of Combat"). For the most part, the audience was a diverse mix of Moroccan VIPs, including the king's adviser André Azoulay (the father of Audrey Azoulay, UNESCO's director general), the president of the Constitutional Council, the minister of higher education, the kingdom's treasurer general, a former foreign minister, the mayor of Rabat, the head of the national press agency, a party leader, and the director of a subsidiary of the royal holding company Al Mada.

French Ambassador Christophe Lecourtier, who worked with Sarkozy as an adviser in 2004 when he was economy minister, was also there. "There's a good ambassador, for a change," Sarkozy said with a smile. It was a dig at Hélène Le Gal, a former Africa adviser to Sarkozy's successor François Hollande whom President Emmanuel Macron appointed ambassador to Morocco in 2019. She joined the European External Action Service in Brussels in 2022.

"It's always a pleasure to welcome Nicolas Sarkozy to Morocco, he's at home here," said French-Moroccan artist Mehdi Qotbi, who was appointed by the king to head the National Museums Foundation in 2011, and is rumored to have influential connections between Paris and Rabat. "With him, we feel appreciated. It's a change from the current president [Macron]," said a finance executive, who wished to remain anonymous.

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