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The new government consists of 33 ministers and junior ministers, including 3 women
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RABAT,
November 8 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Morocco's King Mohammed
VI on Thursday, November 8, appointed a government for the north African
country, almost a month after naming Prime Minister Driss Jettou, but
there are no posts for the Islamic party that trebled its vote in
September elections.
The
new government consists of 33 ministers and junior ministers, including
three women. The king caused a stir in political circles by naming a
non-party prime minister, but several key figures in the outgoing team
kept their jobs, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.
Like
the previous government, the new team includes members of six parties
with dominant roles going to the Socialist Union of Popular Forces
(USFP) and the nationalist Istiqlal movement.
These
two parties took eight portfolios apiece.
Others
went to the center-right National Rally of Independents (RNI), the
National Popular Movement, which has an ethnic Berber powerbase, and the
formerly Communist Party for Progress and Socialism.
However,
despite making advances in a legislative election held on September 27,
an Islamic movement, the Justice and Development Party, will not be
represented in the government and becomes, as observers had expected,
the main parliamentary opposition.
Another
Berber party, the Popular Movement, has made its appearance in the new
team, while two small left-wing parties dropped out.
Several
parties expressed their surprise when the king on October 9 chose
Jettou, a 57-year-old technocrat and the former interior minister, to
head the government, though outgoing prime minister Abderrahmane
Youssoufi's USFP had taken the most seats in the vote.
Jettou
has no political allegiance, but Youssoufi himself said that while the
manner of his appointment was "open to criticism", he
acknowledged "the seriousness and probity" of the new
government chief.
Senior
figures returned to their posts included Finance Minister Fathallah
Oualalou and USFP deputy leader Mohammed El Yazghi, responsible for
urbanism, housing and territorial management.
Foreign
Minister Mohamed Benaissa and National Defense Minister Abderrahmane
Sbai also retained their portfolios. Like Mustafa Sahel, the current
chief administrator of the Rabat region who became minister of the
interior, these appointments are considered a sovereign prerogative.
The
justice ministry, another appointment made directly by the king, was
given to a socialist, Mohamed Bouzoubaa.
Socialist
Nezha Chekrouni, who became minister for Moroccan residents abroad, was
joined by two other women in government, Yasmina Badou of Istiqlal and
Najima Ghozali of the RNI.
The
ministry of health was given to Mohammed Biadillah, a Sahrawi with no
political label.
Biadillah
is the brother of one of the leaders of the Polisario Front, a movement
which took up arms to fight Morocco for control of the Western Sahara
after Spanish settlers pulled out in 1975.
The
front has set up its own Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, and the
United Nations has been seeking ever since to settle a feud over the
region, which Morocco considers to be part of its territory.
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