The plenary session during which the First Chamber of Parliament granted its confidence to Fatima Zahra Mansouri's government, with 204 votes in favor and 127 against, was not a mere routine constitutional formality to activate Article 88 of the Basic Law, but constituted, in my view, the official announcement of the birth of a political phase of extreme complexity. In it, the first woman to chair the executive branch in Morocco's history walks on an unforgiving economic, social, and political minefield. The scenario captured by cameras and documented by national and international press left no respite for initial conventions; the government emerging from the ballots of September 23 is fully aware that electoral legitimacy—with a turnout rate not exceeding 38.02%—does not constitute a blank check, and that the warm applause of the quadruple majority blocs is not enough on its own to obscure the cruel reality of deep fractures opened over the past five years in the fabric of the middle class and vulnerable strata.
In analyzing the architecture of the governmental program looking toward 2031, I observe that the Head of Government opted for evasion through an attractive basket of social and fiscal promises designed to absorb popular malaise and repair lost trust. The commitment to progressively increase direct social support up to a ceiling of 1,000 dirhams, to double the widowhood pension from 50% to 100%, to cover the electricity bill up to 100 dirhams for needy families, to reduce the marginal income tax (IR) rate from 37% to 30%, in addition to rehabilitating 100,000 rural housing units and training and integrating 100,000 youth per year, are catchy headlines that stir the street's aspirations. However, a rigorous political and economic reading places us before a glaring mathematical paradox: how can a government that voluntarily gives up nearly 4,900 million dirhams in tax revenue due to the reduction of income tax commit to additional social expenditures estimated at billions and promise a comprehensive reform of pension systems without altering the retirement age, contribution rates, or pension calculation bases, while limiting the budget deficit to 3% by betting on an ambitious growth rate of 5% per year? This is an equation that, on paper, looks more like a financial adventure than conservative technocratic planning.
Perhaps what gave the debates and rejoinders their unprecedented dramatic tone is the political paradox generated by the new parliamentary map. The National Rally of Independents (RNI), which led the outgoing government, suddenly found itself in the opposition trench, defending through its group leader Yassine Akacha the legacy of Aziz Akhannouch. In a remarkable move, they considered that the new executive's adoption of its predecessor's choices constituted the greatest recognition of its success, before lambasting Mansouri's document on the accusation of excluding 26% of the national territory from development calculations and burying the "Green Generation" agricultural strategy. At the other end of the opposition, Idriss Azami Idrissi, on behalf of the Justice and Development Party (PJD), did not miss the opportunity to settle scores with yesterday's allies, now dispersed between the benches of power and those of the opposition. He unsheathed the weapon of the Constitution and the reports of the Court of Auditors, questioning the executive on the destination of the "million jobs" mirage and on the traceability of the 280,000 billion dirhams spent under the slogan of supporting purchasing power and importing cattle and sheep, without the small breeder or the average citizen seeing the impact on the markets. For their part, the interventions of the Harakati Group and representatives of the left, through the voice of MP Benjelloun, converged to demand raising the guaranteed interprofessional minimum wage (SMIG) to 5,000 dirhams, tax exemption for the small farmer, and the protection of the public health service against the voracity of privatization, in an atmosphere heavy with points of order and incidents that exhausted the patience of the chamber's president, Ahmed Touizi.
Nevertheless, the decisive political moment, in my view, materialized on Thursday when Fatima Zahra Mansouri removed the gloves of muffled diplomacy during her speaking time in rebuttal, deciding to wage the fight with heavy artillery to prove she is not a mere consensus facade for a hybrid coalition. With fine political skill, she turned the tables on yesterday's ally, the RNI, confronting Yassine Akacha with the record of ten full years of his party's hegemony in the agriculture, health, and education sectors, revealing the behind-the-scenes of the former government by stating that her party had demanded support for small and medium-sized enterprises, but the decision had been imposed in favor of large corporations. She was no less unrelenting when she turned her gaze to the PJD benches to dig into the files of the rural development fund billions, the problems of construction on collective lands, and the intricacies of the 2015 elections, launching her most striking political projectile:
“The discourse of victimization and mastery no longer works, and duplicity destroys trust... PAM is a red line and no one is immune to justice”
Fatima Zahra Mansouri
By describing corruption as "a cancer that hinders the lives of citizens" and calling on the entire political class for self-criticism in the face of voter apathy, Mansouri projected herself as a firm leader accepting neither the blackmail of her rivals nor demagogy regarding the probity of her hands.
However, this rhetorical valor cannot mask the structural fragility that I perceive at the heart of the governmental majority itself. If the Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM), through the intervention of MP El Sabari, and the Istiqlal group, led by El Sentissi alongside the interventions of Barouki and Mekaoui, fiercely defended the program as main partners, the entry of the Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP) and the Party of Progress and Socialism (PPS) into the coalition harbors time bombs. The calculated phrase uttered by El Hassan Chokra on behalf of the socialists, emphasizing that "we will be partners in the government's success and the first to sound the alarm on missteps," combined with Meryem Wahassa's approach on behalf of the progressive group regarding the demands of territorial justice and the simplification of rural construction procedures, confirms according to my reading that the two progressive allies have one foot in the government and the other in the street, and that they will not accept bearing the electoral cost of unpopular measures that budgetary constraints might impose in the coming months.
My vision of the immediate future rests on the deep conviction that the real test for the Mansouri government has not yet begun, and that the battle of parliamentary investiture is merely a brief stroll in the park compared to the fierce struggles awaiting it during the debate on the first finance law. During this mandate, the executive will face an unprecedented bicephalous opposition: one represented by the RNI, freshly out of power equipped with all the numerical keys, administrative file intricacies, and secrets capable of cornering current ministers at each oversight session; and the second embodied by the PJD, the Popular Movement, and the left, experts in the art of social mobilization and capturing the pulse of a furious street facing the high cost of living and unemployment.
Faced with this parliamentary and social pincers, I believe Fatima Zahra Mansouri does not have the luxury of time or the privilege of hiding behind technical committees. Either she translates her red lines and incandescent verbiage during the first hundred days into striking sovereign decisions that strike the monopoly lobbies in the food and meat markets, bring out of oblivion the law criminalizing illicit enrichment and conflict of interest, and dismantle the heavy bureaucratic siege on rural housing and small businesses, or her generous promises will transform into a political indictment that will besiege her under the dome of Parliament and exhaust her capital in the street before reaching the halfway point toward the year 2031.
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