Rabat -

 The National Rally of Independents topped the results of the parliamentary elections in Morocco that took place yesterday, Wednesday, as it won 102 seats in the House of Representatives, which entitles it to form a government majority, as stipulated by the constitution.

Article 47 of the Moroccan constitution states that "the king appoints the head of government from the political party that leads the elections for members of the House of Representatives and on the basis of their results."

The custom has been - since the constitution was amended in 2011 - for the king to appoint the Secretary-General of the winning party to the position of prime minister.

The National Rally of Independents party was founded by Ahmed Osman, the former prime minister and son-in-law of the late King Hassan II, and this party - which is described as loyal to the palace - is classified on the right.

As he describes himself, he focuses on "social democracy" as a political reference, and on social justice and citizen empowerment.

Ahmed Osman founded the party in 1978 when he was Prime Minister under the slogan “The New Morocco.” He attracted the bourgeoisie, businessmen, dignitaries and senior officials to join his party, and in the first parliamentary elections in which he participated in 1977, he won 144 seats out of 267.

Ahmed Osman spent 7 years in the position of Prime Minister between 1972 and 1979, the longest period a minister spent in this position, and he remained at the head of the party leadership for 29 years, until he organized his fourth national conference in May 2007, and Mustafa Al-Mansoori was chosen as president, while Ahmed Osman retained the title of "honorary president".

Over the course of its four-decade history, the party witnessed two split movements, the first in 1981 when Muhammad Arslan al-Jadidi came out to found the National Democratic Party, and the second when Abd al-Rahman al-Kuhan, one of the founding leaders of the assembly, defected to found the Reform and Development Party in 2001 in protest against Ahmed Osman’s style. in party management.

G8 leadership

Since its inception, the party has participated in multiple coalition governments, and when coalitions threw it outside the government, its performance in Parliament ranged from opposition to critical support for the government.

In 2010, Salah El-Din Mezouar - who was an unknown name in the world of politics - was elected head of the party after launching what was known as the "corrective movement" within the assembly that overthrew former President Mustafa Al-Mansouri.

Following the protests of the February 20, 2011 movement demanding the overthrow of corruption and tyranny, Mezouar led the Group of Eight (G8) movement, a political alliance that included 8 political parties that came together to confront the Justice and Development Party in the early parliamentary elections called by King Mohammed VI after constitutional amendments.

These elections ended with a landslide victory for the Justice and Development Party, which formed the first Islamist-led government in the history of Morocco, and constituted a catastrophic failure of the Group of Eight and the National Rally of Independents, which won only 25 seats in parliament, and decided to line up in the opposition.

In August 2013, the National Rally of Independents joined the government majority after the Istiqlal Party withdrew and turned to the opposition.


"Blockage" stage

In the last parliamentary elections (2016), the National Rally of Independents won 37 seats, and immediately after the results were announced, it formed a bloc with several parties: the Constitutional Union, the Socialist Union of Popular Forces, and the Popular Movement.

In the name of this bloc, the head of the new grouping, Aziz Akhannouch, who has held the position of Minister of Agriculture since 2007 until today, negotiated Abdelilah Benkirane for the entry of this bloc into the government and the exclusion of the Independence Party from participating in it.

Akhannouch’s conditions caused the suspension of negotiations to form a government, which was called in Morocco a “political blockage” (meaning disruption and aggravation), which lasted for 5 months, and led to the dismissal of the appointed prime minister, Abdelilah Benkirane, at which time King Saad Eddine El Othmani, the second man in the party, was tasked with forming the government. This is what happened according to the terms of the National Rally of Independents.

new dynamic

In October 2016, Aziz Akhannouch was elected head of the National Rally of Independents, and his election marked the beginning of a period of restructuring the party and establishing a new dynamism.

However, the image of the party and its leader was quickly damaged during the boycott campaign that took place in the country in 2018, which was launched from social networking sites, and included 3 brands, including the “Africa” gas distribution stations owned by Aziz Akhannouch.

The campaign sheds light on the so-called "marriage of money and power" and the conflict of interests of personalities who hold positions of responsibility in the government in addition to practicing commercial and economic activities.

Aziz Akhannouch is one of the country's rich, as Forbes magazine ranked him among the world's richest in 2021, among a list of 22 Arab billionaires. Akhannouch ranked 13th on the list, with a fortune of $1.9 billion. At the international level, he ranked 1664 among the world's rich.

Aziz Akhannouch, who is described as close to the palace, has worked in recent years to restore the party's image and establish parallel organizations, associations, organizations and new branches in various regions and regions.

In November 2019, he launched a communication program called “100 Days, 100 Cities.” During that period, the party’s leaders toured the medium and small cities of Morocco in direct communication meetings with the residents, where their concerns, suggestions and ideas were heard, in preparation for the parliamentary and municipal elections.