For the first time in the history of the Kingdom, Morocco will be governed by a woman. On Tuesday, September 29, King Mohammed VI appointed Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri, 50, a lawyer, former mayor of Marrakech and Minister of Urban Planning and Housing, and tasked her with forming the government, pursuant to Article 47 of the Constitution.
El Mansouri is the first woman to hold the office in Morocco. In North Africa she is the second, after Tunisia’s Najla Bouden. The choice comes six days after the legislative elections won by her party, the PAM, Parti Authenticité et Modernité (Authenticity and Modernity Party), with 97 of 395 seats. The RNI follows with 66, the Istiqlal with 65 and the PJD with 54. But the figure that weighs most is another one: turnout stood at 38%, among the lowest in recent years. It would be wrong, however, to make her the emblem of a revolution against the system. She is not, and that is perhaps the most interesting aspect: her appointment is an enormous symbolic break produced within institutional continuity, not against it. El Mansouri is a woman of power, an insider to the institutions, to the outgoing majority and to the ruling class. The PAM itself was part of the government that voters have just judged. Her arrival does not erase the contradictions of Moroccan politics. She has served as a member of parliament, is now Minister of Aménagement du territoire, Urbanisme, Habitat and Politique de la ville, and sits at the heart of the PAM. She studied law at Mohammed V University and then specialized in business law in Montpellier and New York. In Morocco she is known as “the pasha’s daughter”: her father, Abderrahman El Mansouri, was president of the Marrakech Bar Association, pasha of the city and ambassador to the Emirates. Reducing her to a mere “daughter of…” would be unfair, though. Behind her institutional profile lie solid legal and economic expertise and an already proven record as mayor of Marrakech and Minister of Housing, a tangible administrative competence that will be the true measure of her government. Her appointment, moreover, was not a foregone conclusion. The Constitution provides that the King chooses the head of government from the party that came first, but does not require that it be the party leader. The name of Fouzi Lekjaa was also mentioned, hugely popular for the successes of the national football team and a member of the PAM since July. During the campaign, the party focused on renewing its candidate lists, with more young people and more women. When asked whether she was ready, El Mansouri did not put herself forward: she left the decision to the King, saying it would be a great honor. After the vote she added that she would respect the royal choice even if it fell on Lekjaa. It would be a mistake to think that women were absent from Moroccan politics. They have long been present in parliament, in local administrations and in governments, holding major portfolios: from Economy and Finance to Energy Transition, from Tourism to Solidarity. Zoulikha Nasri was the King’s first female adviser, Zineb El Adaoui presides over the Court of Accounts, and Amina Benkhadra has headed the national office for hydrocarbons and mines. Yet no woman had ever led the government. For a generation of Moroccan girls, it may become normal to see a woman leave the Royal Palace with the mandate to form a government, represent the executive before the King and address the country as head of government: images that until now were reserved for men. Growing used to seeing them is already a way of changing what people believe is possible. That is no small thing. The most urgent problem to emerge from the ballot boxes, now, is not only who will govern, but who did not vote. More than six in ten Moroccans stayed home, and within that distance lies an entire generation. It has been visible in social unrest, in protests, in departures and in the desire to leave, in young people who look to the other shore of the Mediterranean as the place to build a life. It has been visible in Ceuta too. Abstention is not the only key to reading the situation. But it is the most visible symptom of something deeper: young people who do not believe they have a future in Morocco and who no longer ask anything of politics.
The same ballot boxes produced another picture: the return of the PJD, the Islamist party that collapsed in 2021 after ten years in government, back with 54 seats. With it, Abdelilah Benkirane has reappeared, the protagonist of a personalized and combative campaign in which family, morality and the role of women kept resurfacing. Some of his statements sparked controversy and accusations of sexism. The PJD has already announced that it will not join a coalition with the PAM and prefers the opposition. El Mansouri, for her part, has said she has “no red lines” on alliances. One cannot attribute to the King the intention of sending a message to the Islamists, but the coincidence is hard to ignore. As political Islam returns to the opposition with a deeply conservative discourse on family and relations between men and women, Morocco finds itself, for the first time, with a woman leading the government. All this comes as the country approaches 2030, which will be not only a World Cup but a showcase. Infrastructure, tourism, investment and the modernization of cities are the material transformation. But there is also an immaterial infrastructure: the image a society builds of itself. A Morocco that presents itself in 2030 with a woman at the head of government sends a powerful message, especially now that the delicate overhaul of the Moudawana, the Family Code, which governs marriage, divorce, parentage, child custody, inheritance and polygamy, is under way, and the place of women in society is being debated. A Muslim woman, former mayor of Marrakech, minister and leader of the party that came first, at the head of one of the oldest kingdoms in the Arab world. A message that will travel around the world.
The easiest misconception must be avoided, however. A woman at the head of government does not automatically make a society modern, does not make an executive effective, does not on its own restore trust in politics, and does not answer the vast portion of the population that did not turn up at the polls. Without policies on jobs, wages, healthcare, education, social mobility and forgotten territories, the novelty effect will quickly wear off. There is an enormous difference between putting a woman at the top and changing the condition of women, between a new face and a new relationship between citizens and politics, between modernizing the image of power and modernizing power. Still, it would be wrong to underestimate the value of image. Societies also change through what suddenly becomes possible to see, and some doors, once opened, do not close again. For El Mansouri, being the first is not the finish line but the starting point. Her first task is a concrete one: to build a majority in a parliament where the PAM does not hold an absolute majority. But even before the announcement, a question was circulating in the Arabic press that may seem odd to an outside observer: where will a woman head of government pray during ceremonies presided over by the King? Beside him, as male heads of government are accustomed to doing, or behind, with the women? It may look like a matter of protocol, but it says a great deal. The King presides over those ceremonies as Amir Al-Mouminine, Commander of the Faithful. Constitutionally, there is no impediment based on gender: the function of head of government is political and executive, not religious. But institutions are not made of constitutions alone. They are made of customs, symbols, rituals and images, built until now around men. The question of where she will pray may linger for a while. Then, most likely, no one will care anymore. That is how some of the deepest revolutions happen: when what seemed impossible yesterday becomes normal tomorrow.
