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.

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A Born Nationalist
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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.

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Diplomatic Experience
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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.

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Party Stalwart
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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,

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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).

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A Corrosive Scandal
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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.

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Minister - But No Portfolio
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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.

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Party Baggage
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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

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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.

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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.

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Open to the U.S.
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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.



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Visit Embassy Rabat's Classified Website;
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/nea/rabat

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Riley