First female prime minister named in Morocco after winning elections

Morocco's King Mohammed VI has appointed Fatima Zahra El Mansouri as the country's first female prime minister, following her party's victory in last week's parliamentary elections, according to BBC News.

The 50-year-old lawyer, who leads the centrist Authenticity and Modernity Party, becomes only the second woman to head a government anywhere in the Arab world, after Tunisia's Najla Bouden, BBC News reported.

The king selected El Mansouri over Fouzi Lekjaa, the country's football federation chief and a senior figure within the same party, the broadcaster said. Morocco operates as a constitutional monarchy, with the king retaining the bulk of executive authority, and the constitution grants him the power to appoint the head of government from the party that wins the most seats in elections to the House of Representatives, according to BBC News.

El Mansouri has served as mayor of Marrakesh for several years, having first taken the post in 2009 as the city's first female mayor before returning to it following the 2021 elections, BBC News reported. She also held a ministerial role over the past five years, overseeing national territory planning, urban development, housing and city policy under the outgoing prime minister, Aziz Akhannouch, according to the broadcaster.

Trained as a lawyer, El Mansouri studied at Mohammed V University in Rabat before pursuing further studies in France and the United States, focusing on business and corporate law, BBC News said. She joined politics after the founding of her party in 2008 and, since February last year, has served as coordinator of its collective leadership body, which has governed without a single party chief since that time, according to the report.

Speaking at a press conference before her appointment was confirmed, El Mansouri was asked whether arrangements would need to change for her to take part in religious ceremonies attended by the king, such as Friday prayers and Eid, where men and women worship in separate areas. BBC News reported that she avoided a direct answer, instead describing the king as the country's foremost supporter of women. "His Majesty is the holder of wisdom… If I am entrusted with the responsibility of head of government, it will be a great honour," she said, according to the broadcaster.

El Mansouri has previously pushed back against being characterized as tough or unyielding. In comments to her party's magazine in 2021 cited by BBC News, she said she considered herself neither "a woman of steel nor iron," but rather "a free activist." The broadcaster noted that she has generally avoided public commentary on women's rights issues, even as Morocco continues to debate matters such as a potential ban on polygamy and equal inheritance rights between men and women.

Her party won 97 seats in the election, well short of the 198 needed for a majority in the 395-seat parliament, meaning El Mansouri must now negotiate a coalition, BBC News reported. It remains unclear which parties she will partner with, as her party's relationship with the National Rally of Independents, the senior partner in the previous coalition, has soured, according to the broadcaster.

Meanwhile, the Islamist Justice and Development Party made a significant comeback, taking 54 seats compared with just 13 in the prior election, a resurgence linked to the return of former prime minister Abdelilah Benkirane as party leader, BBC News reported. Benkirane has said his party will remain in opposition and will not join forces with El Mansouri's party, according to the broadcaster.