Ninety-Seven Seats, No Deadline

Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri has been head of government of Morocco for twelve days and has no government. King Mohammed VI appointed her on 29 September, after her Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM) won 97 of the 395 seats in the House of Representatives in the election of 23 September, according to the results published by the government portal. Hespress reported on Saturday that a governing majority requires 198 and that she was entering a second week of talks with no coalition announced. On her own party’s seats she is 101 short.

The constitution does not say how long she has to close that gap. The state’s budget law does say how long it has to produce a budget. The 2027 Finance Bill must reach the House of Representatives by 20 October, a Tuesday, nine days from today, whether or not a majority exists to defend it.

What Article 47 does and does not do

Article 47 is short. In the English rendering published by the Constitute project, the King appoints the head of government from the party that came first in the elections to the House of Representatives, in view of their results, and appoints the other members of the government on her proposal. It contains no time limit, and Hespress says the same: the article sets no explicit deadline for completing coalition negotiations. It also names a party rather than a person. The same Hespress report recalls that in 2016 Abdelilah Benkirane spent about five months unable to assemble a government before being replaced by Saad Eddine El Othmani, from the same party. This publication reads that as showing the appointment can be revisited without a new election; the text does not say what happens at the end of a failed attempt.

Appointment is also not investiture. Under Article 88, once the King has named the ministers, the head of government presents her programme to the two chambers meeting together, each chamber debates it, and the House of Representatives votes. The government is invested only if it obtains the confidence of the absolute majority of the members composing that chamber. The test is a majority of the chamber’s membership, not of the votes cast, so an absence or an abstention counts against her in the same way a “no” does. Half of 395 is 197.5; the figure is 198. That is this publication’s arithmetic, and it matches the number Hespress gives.

Counting to 198

The official count behind PAM’s 97 runs: the National Rally of Independents (RNI) 66, Istiqlal 65, the Justice and Development Party (PJD) 54, the Popular Movement (MP) 29, the Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP) 26 and the Party of Progress and Socialism (PPS) 19, with the remaining 39 seats spread across seven smaller parties. The formula that The New Arab’s source called the most viable adds Istiqlal, the USFP and the PPS — the old Democratic Bloc, or Koutla — to PAM, for 207 seats. That is nine over the threshold. PAM and Istiqlal alone make 162; adding the USFP makes 188, ten short. On these numbers the PPS, the smallest of the four, is not optional unless another party replaces it.

The PPS has not said yes. At an extraordinary Central Committee meeting earlier this month several of its leaders backed joining the next government under conditions, Hespress’s live tracker reports. On Sunday the tracker quoted party sources as saying the PPS was still discussing an offer from Mansouri, with a meeting expected in the coming week, and the MP’s secretary-general, Mohamed Ouzzine, as saying his party had received no further communication from her. Istiqlal’s National Council, by the same tracker, unanimously approved joining on Saturday. The USFP’s National Council did likewise the same day, La Vérité reported, leaving the allocation of portfolios open. The USFP has been out of government since El Othmani’s term ended in October 2021.

The PJD and the Left Alliance declined to take part in the consultations, Hespress says. Benkirane, who leads the PJD again, told the tracker on Sunday that a meeting with Mansouri would not change his party’s decision to go into opposition. The two parties hold 62 seats between them, and none of those seats is in the sums above.

The party that is neither in nor out

The RNI, which led the outgoing government and holds 66 seats, is the unresolved variable. Hespress says the party has publicly declared itself willing to join. Mansouri did not invite its leader, Mohamed Chouki, to her second round of talks, but PAM’s Abdellatif Ouahbi told Hespress that no party had been excluded, the RNI included, and that Mansouri would have the final say on the coalition’s make-up. Istiqlal’s leader, Nizar Baraka, said on Saturday that he had received confirmation that PAM had decided to exclude the RNI; an Istiqlal source later said his remarks were based on media reports. A senior RNI source told Hespress the party “will not be in a position to impose conditions or exert pressure for ministerial posts” and would follow the consultations into the majority or the opposition. The same source said voices inside the party had emerged in favour of opposition. That is one anonymous source.

A calendar with a date on it

The 20 October date does not come from the constitution. La Vérité traces it to Article 48 of Organic Law 130-13 on the finance law, which requires the government to deposit the bill with the House of Representatives by that day, and Hespress cites the same organic law. Article 75 of the constitution sends the finance bill to that chamber first and leaves the conditions to an organic law. La Vérité adds that the House of Representatives then has 30 days, the House of Councillors 22 and a final reading in the lower house six; Le Matin set out the same periods for the 2024 budget. Run to their limits from 20 October, they carry the vote into mid-December. Article 75 supplies the backstop: if at the end of the budget year the finance law has not been voted, or has not been promulgated because it was referred to the Constitutional Court, the government opens by decree the credits needed to run the public services.

The bill does not have to be written from nothing. Hespress says the outgoing government set the broad framework, including a 2027–2029 three-year budget programme. La Vérité dates the Finance Ministry’s first budget orientations to 22 July, a guidance note to 12 August and a report on budget execution and the three-year macroeconomic framework to 11 September. In 2021, Hespress notes, Aziz Akhannouch’s government was appointed on 7 October and filed the 2022 bill on 18 October, two days early, on work inherited from El Othmani’s administration. What differs now, Hespress says, is that PAM campaigned on commitments with substantial multi-year costs, including changes to pensions, income taxation and direct social assistance. What goes into the first bill and what waits for amendments is a coalition decision, and the coalition does not exist yet.

What is not known

None of the sources reviewed says which cabinet will formally file the bill if no new government has been named by 20 October. Article 49 lists the general orientations of the finance bill among the matters the Council of Ministers deliberates, and Article 48 describes that council as made up of the head of government and the ministers, so some cabinet is involved. Article 47 provides that a government whose functions have ended handles current affairs until the new government is constituted. This publication has not found a source applying those provisions to this transition. Ouahbi told Hespress that the talks would enter a decision phase in the coming week and that the coalition’s initial make-up was expected to take shape early in it. That is a forecast from a party negotiator, not a commitment.

The constitution gives Mansouri no date by which she must have 198 votes. The organic law gives the state a date by which it must have a budget, and that date arrives first.

Sources

The appointment date, the majority threshold, the reading of Article 47, the 2016 and 2021 precedents and the budget framework are from Hespress English; the party positions and quotations are from its live tracker. The seat totals are from the provisional results published on Maroc.ma. The 207-seat formula is from The New Arab. The legal basis of the 20 October date, the parliamentary periods and the preparation dates are from La Vérité, the periods also from Le Matin, and the USFP vote is from La Vérité. The constitutional provisions are paraphrased from the Constitute Project’s unofficial English translation. The arithmetic and the remarks about what the sources do not say are this publication’s.