PAM may have won Wednesday’s election, but Fatima Zahra El Mansouri was not about to start handing out places in the next government on Thursday.
Who leads that government comes first, she told reporters in Rabat, brushing aside questions about possible partners until the King appoints a head of government and PAM’s political bureau has met.
“Let’s wait for the political bureau meeting and the appointment of a woman or man as head of government,” said El Mansouri, who coordinates PAM’s three-member collective leadership alongside Mehdi Bensaid and Fatima Saadi.
She has not ruled herself out.
Asked whether she was ready to become head of government, El Mansouri said she would regard the responsibility as a “great honor” if entrusted to her by the King.
PAM goes into the post-election bargaining with 97 of the House’s 395 seats—first place, but nowhere near enough to govern by itself. RNI has 66, Istiqlal 65 and PJD 54, according to the provisional results.
One potential partner had already counted itself out. Earlier on Thursday, PJD chief Abdelilah Benkirane said there was “absolutely no room” for his party to serve in a government headed by PAM. His party, back with 54 seats after being cut down to 13 in 2021, was headed for the opposition, he said.
El Mansouri would not reciprocate. “We will not exclude anyone from discussions on alliances, and we respect all political parties,” she said when asked about the PJD. PAM, she added, was prepared to talk to all parties.
The difference was hard to miss. Benkirane had already drawn his line. PAM, fresh from finishing first, was keeping the field open.
There was good reason not to get ahead of the arithmetic.
Its 97 seats give PAM a 31-seat lead over RNI, but a government majority requires support well beyond its own benches. RNI and Istiqlal, PAM’s partners in the outgoing government, together hold another 131 seats. PJD returns with a bloc of 54.
Who gets asked to put those numbers together depends first on the appointment of the head of government.
El Mansouri was happy to leave it there. She was less guarded when Fouzi Lekjaa’s name came up.
Lekjaa joined PAM in July and quickly became one of the faces of its campaign, stirring speculation over the weight he would carry inside the party after the election. El Mansouri dismissed talk of a contest between them and called him an “added value.”
“He is respected because he succeeds in every assignment he is given,” she said.
She went further, calling Lekjaa the “star of the elections” and saying there was “no competition” between them.
For a party that had spent part of the run-up batting away questions about Lekjaa’s arrival and its own internal balance, the answer was pointed enough. El Mansouri put her own readiness for the premiership on record without treating Lekjaa as a rival for space inside PAM.
Read also : No room for PJD in PAM-led govt, says Benkirane
The questions eventually travelled across the Strait. On relations with Spain, El Mansouri described the relationship as both “historic and necessary.” There had been ups and downs, she acknowledged, but geography imposed its own terms.
The two neighbors, she said, needed high-level economic, trade and diplomatic relations. Ceuta remains the rub.
The latest migration crisis there has again put Moroccan minors in the enclave at the center of dealings with Madrid. El Mansouri said she expected solutions to be found, but not at the expense of Morocco’s position on the rights of its underage nationals.
“We will find solutions, but we will not give up our positions regarding the human rights of our minors, because they are our responsibility,” she said.
For PAM, the more immediate business remains at home. It has moved from 87 seats in 2021 to 97 and, for the first time, finished a legislative election ahead of every other party. RNI, the outgoing government’s largest party, has fallen from 102 seats to 66.
That has settled who came first. Who governs with whom is still waiting its turn.
