RABAT: The king of Morocco on Tuesday named Marrakesh mayor Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri the country’s first woman prime minister, the royal cabinet announced, after her party won last week’s parliamentary elections.
Her centre-right Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM) had dominated the vote, winning 97 out of 395 seats in the House of Representatives — 31 more than the next closest competitor, although the poll was marked by the lowest turnout in two decades.
The royal cabinet said King Mohammed VI has now tasked the 50-year-old, who also served as housing minister, with “forming the new government”. Without an outright majority, the PAM will have to form a coalition with other parties for its five-year tenure, though the monarch retains broad powers over major policies.
The PAM was founded in 2008 by current royal adviser Fouad Ali El Himma as a counterweight to the country’s Islamist movement. El Mansouri was also the first woman to serve as mayor of Marrakesh, winning the office in 2009 before losing it six years later, then retaking it again in 2021.
Published in Dawn, September 30th, 2026
