The Royal Palace in Rabat made its choice on 29 September, six days after the legislative elections. King Mohammed VI received Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri, appointed her head of government and asked her to form the next cabinet. No woman had held the post before. The decision follows the 2011 Constitution, which requires the king to choose the head of government from the party that wins the most seats.
That party is the Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM). According to results announced by Interior Minister Abdelouafi Laftit, it won 97 of the 395 seats in the House of Representatives. Far behind is the National Rally of Independents (RNI) of outgoing head of government Aziz Akhannouch, which kept only 66 seats after winning 102 in 2021. Istiqlal came close behind with 65. The Justice and Development Party (PJD) made a comeback with 54 seats, up from 13 in the last parliament. Next came the Popular Movement (29), the USFP (26), the PPS (19) and the Constitutional Union (17).
Turnout fell to 38.08 percent, or about six million voters, down from 50.86 percent five years earlier. The southern provinces were the exception: 77 percent voted in the Laâyoune Sakia El Hamra region and 61 percent in Dakhla Oued Eddahab.
The new head of government knows how the state works from the inside. She was born on 3 January 1976 in Marrakech, the daughter of Abderrahman El Mansouri, a former pasha of the city who later served as ambassador to the United Arab Emirates. She studied law at Mohammed V University, the University of Montpellier and Pace University in New York. In 2005 she joined the Marrakech bar, where she specialised in property law. She went into politics two years later and was one of the founders of the PAM in 2008.
In 2009, at 33, she was elected mayor of Marrakech, one of the first women to run a major Moroccan city. She left city hall in 2015 and won it back in 2021. In between, she served two terms as a member of parliament and chaired the PAM’s national council from 2015 to 2024. In October 2021, Aziz Akhannouch made her Minister of Land Planning, Urban Planning, Housing and Urban Policy. Since February 2024 she has coordinated the party’s collegial leadership. As early as 2014, Forbes named her one of Africa’s twenty most influential women under 45.
The hardest part is still ahead. An absolute majority takes 198 seats, so the PAM needs at least 101 more. Renewing the outgoing alliance with the RNI and Istiqlal would bring 228 seats, a comfortable margin on paper. But the RNI’s losses and a bitter campaign between the former partners could make talks difficult. Other combinations are possible. The consultations under way this week will show what balance Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri chooses to lead the country for the rest of the decade.