King Mohammed VI on Tuesday appointed Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri as Morocco's first woman prime minister, tasking her with forming a new government after her party topped last week's parliamentary elections, the royal cabinet announced. The 50-year-old, who is the mayor of Marrakesh and a former housing minister, was received by the king at the royal palace in Rabat and named head of government under Article 47 of the constitution, according to the state news agency MAP.
El Mansouri coordinates the centre-right Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM), which won 97 of the 395 seats in the House of Representatives, 31 more than its nearest rival. Turnout, however, was the lowest in two decades. In a televised address, El Mansouri called her appointment "truly historic" and a source of pride "for all Moroccan women". She said she would first hold internal consultations within her party, then talks with all political groups, before proposing the make-up of the government.
Because the PAM lacks an outright majority, it must build a coalition. The National Rally of Independents (RNI), which leads the outgoing coalition, won 66 seats, the right-wing Istiqlal party 65, and the Islamist opposition Justice and Development Party (PJD) 54. The PJD, which had won just 13 seats in 2021, campaigned partly on fighting corruption. Its leader, former prime minister Abdelilah Benkirane, hailed a "victory" but ruled out joining a PAM-led coalition, saying the party was "tainted by fraud" without giving details. The monarch also retains broad powers over major policy in Morocco.
El Mansouri joined the PAM in 2008, the year it was founded by Fouad Ali El Himma, now a royal adviser, as a counterweight to the country's Islamist movement. She became Marrakesh's first woman mayor in 2009, lost the post in 2015 and regained it in 2021. Abdellah Tourabi, a political journalist at the Moroccan magazine Tel Quel, told RFI she was chosen in part for her political track record.
Her government will face pressure over unemployment, the cost of living and social inequalities that weigh especially on young people. The election came weeks after tens of thousands of mainly young Moroccan migrants rushed into Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on Morocco's northern coast, and a year after a Gen-Z protest movement demanded better health care and education. El Mansouri acknowledged "high expectations" and promised "concrete and realistic solutions". Her party has pledged average annual growth of five percent, inflation of two percent and at least one million new jobs over five years.