MOROCCO: AN INSIDE LOOK AT NEW PRIME MINISTER

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 RABAT 001617 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/17/2017 TAGS: PINR PREL PGOV MO SUBJECT: MOROCCO: AN INSIDE LOOK AT NEW PRIME MINISTER ABBAS EL-FASSI REF: A. RABAT 1607 ¶B. RABAT 1599 ¶C. RABAT 1498 ¶D. RABAT 1495 Classified by Ambassador Thomas Riley for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d). ¶1. (C) Summary: Prime Minister Abbas El-Fassi, sworn in on October 15, is an experienced and seasoned politician with four past Ministerial stints and a ten year diplomatic career. El-Fassi was chosen PM as leader of the largest party in the incoming parliament, but there are doubts about his energy and competence. El-Fassi's Istiqlal Party has a reputation for corruption and organizational dysfunction, but there is no evidence that he is personally corrupt, and he did promote a new generation of leaders in the party. El-Fassi has been lampooned for excessive deference toward the Palace - which likely facilitated the King's decision to choose him. A diplomatic veteran, El-Fassi has long standing good relations with the Embassy and the USG, including participating in a meeting with the Secretary in October ¶2006. End summary. -------------- A Born Nationalist -------------- ¶2. (C) King Mohammed VI's nomination of Abbas El-Fassi as Prime Minister caught most observers by surprise. The head of the Istiqlal Party, which garnered the most seats in the September 7 parliamentary elections, he was nonetheless a controversial choice. At first glance, El-Fassi would seem eminently qualified for the post. He is the nephew and son-in-law of the founder of the Istiqlal (independence) party, which served as a political arm of the Moroccan resistance during the struggle for independence from France, finally achieved in 1956. El-Fassi has been in public life for most of his adulthood, and has been seen as working himself toward the Prime Ministership from an early age. A lawyer by training, El-Fassi had a stint as president of the General Union of Moroccan Students in the early 1960's. ¶3. (C) In the early 1970's, he served as secretary general of the Moroccan League for Human Rights, an offshoot of the Istiqlal Party. (Though the group was never particularly distinguished for its achievements, the mere establishment of a human rights entity at the height of repression under King Hassan II is in itself significant.) By the late 70's, El-Fassi became a leader of the Moroccan bar, and attained a senior leadership position in the Istiqlal Party. He was named Minister of Housing in 1977, followed by a stint as Social Affairs Minister in 1981. -------------- Diplomatic Experience -------------- ¶4. (C) El-Fassi began his forays into foreign affairs in 1983-84, when he was tapped as a delegation leader to a pan-North African meeting of political parties in Tunis, a series of meetings which helped lay the groundwork for the 1989 formation of the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU),and also helped him prepare for subsequent diplomatic roles. El-Fassi was named Moroccan Ambassador to Tunisia and the Arab League (1985-90). The PLO was in exile in Tunis at the time and he likely had a relationship with ARAFAT and other senior Palestinian leaders. He then moved on to the key job of Ambassador in Paris, 1990-94. Though his time overseas took him off the Morocco's domestic political stage, his role in these key strategic posts for Morocco enhanced his prestige and helped him sharpen political skills he would bring to bear at home. -------------- Party Stalwart -------------- ¶5. (C) Returning to Morocco in 1994, El-Fassi reinserted himself into party politics and developed close ties to Istiqlal Party leader (and co-founder, with El-Fassi's father-in-law Allal) Mohammad Boucetta. Over the following years, Boucetta took on the role of a mentor and patron to the younger El-Fassi. At the time, Boucetta was involved in an increasingly antagonistic relationship with Driss Basri, RABAT 00001617 002 OF 004 King Hassan II's iron-fisted Interior Minister. Boucetta objected to Basri's micromanagement of party politics and overt election rigging. ¶6. (C) The 1997 parliamentary elections resulted in a 21 seat loss for the Istiqlal Party, a set-back allegedly engineered by Basri as pay-back for Boucetta's perceived insolence. The King asked the leftist USFP to form a coalition government led by Prime Minister Abderahmane El-Youssefi, who in turned tapped El-Fassi as Minister of Labor - his third stint in a cabinet job. The following year, Boucetta stepped down as Istiqlal party leader, passing the baton to El-Fassi, who reportedly had a better relationship with the Palace (King Hassan II died two years later). -------------- A Corrosive Scandal -------------- ¶7. (C) The Ministry of Labor is one of the most precarious of all cabinet spots in Morocco - where unemployment is chronically high and is sometimes an explosive political issue. El-Fassi's reputation suffered a severe setback with the emergence of the "An-Najat" scandal in 2002. That year, word quickly spread through Morocco that An-Najat, an Emirati company, was seeking to hire 30,000 Moroccans for a tourism venture. The recruitment drive was facilitated by the National Employment Agency, under the Ministry of Labor, and Minister El-Fassi personally promoted the endeavor, apparently eager to share in the credit for finding such a significant number of jobs for Moroccan youth. ¶8. (C) Tens of thousands turned in applications to the National Employment Agency and 30,000 were subsequently notified that they had been accepted for work and advised to obtain a medical clearance at a cost of DH 900 (about USD 130). However, time passed and none of the candidates ever heard from An-Najat, and their attempts to contact or locate the company in the UAE proved fruitless. Realizing they had been duped (though who actually profited remains unclear), the candidates and their families vented their fury on the National Employment Agency, on the Labor Ministry, and on El-Fassi personally. ¶9. (C) El-Fassi initially attempted to deflect some of the blame onto Prime Minister Youssefi, who nominally served as President of the Employment Agency's board of directors. El-Fassi succeeded in finding alternate jobs for a small fraction of the disappointed, and compensation for some of the others, but most went away empty handed and carrying an anger that continues to burn today. There is no evidence that El-Fassi colluded in the apparent scam nor that he profited in any way. That he was politically damaged is abundantly clear. The scam victims, their advocates, and the media portrayed El-Fassi's handling of the matter as indifferent, incompetent, and irresponsible. -------------- Minister - But No Portfolio -------------- ¶10. (C) The blowback from the Najat Affair apparently undermined El-Fassi's chances of being nominated as Prime Minister following the 2002 parliamentary elections, (though his nomination in 2007 proves the damage was not permanently crippling). Istiqlal, with 48 of 325 seats, joined with leftist and nationalist parties to form a new coalition government, but the King opted for Driss Jettou, a non-partisan technocrat as PM. El-Fassi was appointed Minister of State without portfolio, a position that is tantamount in protocol terms to that of Deputy PM, but with little tangible authority. He nonetheless led Moroccan delegations to various international diplomatic events, such as the OIC conference in 2003 and the Community of Democracies Conference in 2005. -------------- Party Baggage -------------- ¶11. (C) The Istiqlal Party under El-Fassi's leadership struggled to keep pace with the evolving political environment. Despite some lip service paid to modernization, Istiqlal retained an outmoded internal governance structure and El-Fassi seemed generally content to let the party rest RABAT 00001617 003 OF 004 on its real but fading prestige as a vestige of the liberation struggle. Alone among the coalition partners, Istiqlal turned down capacity building assistance offered by NDI (funded by USAID),whose chief of party told us the party was too disorganized to benefit from the program anyway. Istiqlal also remained saddled with a reputation for corruption: 7 of the 15 Chamber of Councilors candidates prosecuted for malfeasance after the 2006 Upper House elections were Istiqlalis. ¶12. (C) This image of a dysfunctional and unpopular party fueled widespread expectations that Istiqlal would be set back in the September 7 parliamentary elections, with the Islamist PJD projected to come out on top. In the end, though the PJD did indeed win the popular vote, it was Istiqlal, with its voter base in many of Morocco's most rural constituencies, in a system engineered to favor the countryside over the cities, that won the most seats. There is significant, if mainly anecdotal, evidence that Istiqlal candidates (among others) indulged in extensive indirect vote buying and vote suppression, despite the general transparency of the actual balloting process. ¶13. (C) Istiqlal's many flaws notwithstanding, it has had more success than its rivals in promoting a new generation of dynamic young leaders, typified by new Health Minister Yasmina Baddou, Housing Minister Toufiq Hejira, and Transport Minister Karim Ghellab. They are among a small but prominent group of capable Istiqlalis considered potential material for the Prime Ministership. -------------- Submissive Toward the Palace -------------- ¶14. (C) News of El-Fassi's appointment has been unpopular with Morocco's commentariat. His overall thin record of achievement, compounded by the Najat Affair, have led many opinion leaders to openly question the King's choice. El-Fassi has long been mocked for statements indicating an excessively submissive stance toward the Palace, e.g. "Our party's priorities are those set by His Majesty the King." This view was reinforced by one of his first statements to the press after his September 19 nomination: "I intend to implement His Majesty's instructions literally." ¶15. (C) Even as a legion of critics grumbled over El-Fassi's appointment, there was also broad praise for the King's application of "democratic logic" in naming him (particularly given that the King is rumored to dislike him personally). Some leading commentators described the decision as an evolutionary step in Morocco's political system, reserving the Prime Minister's seat for the party which garners the most votes, as is the practice in more developed constitutional monarchies. The "democratic logic" may well have been the key element in the King's decision, but El-Fassi's repeated pledges of subservience to the Palace no doubt worked in his favor as well. -------------- Open to the U.S. -------------- ¶16. (C) In past posts, El-Fassi has kept an open door to the USG. The Ambassador has regularly met with him in the past several years, and when he called El-Fassi on September 20 to congratulate him on his nomination (ref C),the PM-designate emphasized his intent to work closely with the USG during his term. El-Fassi has long placed value on contacts with the U.S. In the spring of 2004, he took the initiative to visit the U.S. in his capacity as Istiqlal leader. During his time in Washington, he met with then NEA DAS Carpenter and had a slate of other meetings on Capitol Hill, as well as encounters with the Moroccan community in the U.S. As Minister of State, he accompanied FM Benaissa to meet Secretary Rice in October 2006 to discuss Western Sahara, and SIPDIS subsequently led the GOM's delegation to Beijing to demarche the Chinese on the issue. We expect El-Fassi will remain very accessible to the USG. ***************************************** Visit Embassy Rabat's Classified Website; http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/nea/rabat RABAT 00001617 004 OF 004 ***************************************** Riley