Marrakech – Ahmed Touizi, a member of the political bureau of the Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM), was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of Morocco’s parliament, on Tuesday.
He obtained 220 of the 369 votes cast, against 59 for Driss El Azami El Idrissi of the Justice and Development Party (PJD), which sits in the opposition, while 90 ballots were declared void. The vote was held under Article 62 of the Constitution.
Touizi succeeds Rachid Talbi Alami of the National Rally of Independents (RNI), who abstained from Tuesday’s ballot. The election came a day after the announcement of the governing majority, which brings together the PAM, the Istiqlal, the Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP), and the Party of Progress and Socialism (PPS).
The four parties hold 207 of the 395 seats, nine above the absolute-majority threshold of 198.
The plenary session opened at 3 p.m. and was chaired by Abdelaziz Abba of the Istiqlal, the oldest elected member, who won one of the two seats reserved for the Boujdour constituency. Under the House’s rules, the Speaker is elected by secret ballot, by absolute majority in the first round and relative majority in the second.
Touizi is no newcomer to the institution he will now lead, nor is he a political figure whose rise can be attributed merely to PAM’s 2026 electoral victory. His political involvement predates the party’s founding by more than three decades.
By his own account, given to the newspaper Al-Intifada in a 2014 interview, he entered politics in 1974 when he joined the National Union of Popular Forces (UNFP) in Marrakech, linked to the veteran leftist Abdallah Ibrahim. His path then ran through four parties: the UNFP, the Constitutional Union (UC), the Popular Movement (MP), and finally the PAM, founded in 2008.
In that interview, he described himself as a teacher by profession and, at the time, married with two children. He defended his party moves, arguing that Morocco’s old distinctions between left, right, and center had become hard to apply.
His career in elected office stretches back decades. He served as president of the municipality of Aït Ourir, in Al Haouz province, from 1992 to 1997 and again from 2002 to 2012, and returned to that post in September 2021. Touizi has maintained a political base in Aït Ourir through his involvement in local government and infrastructure projects.
In September 2012, he was elected president of the former Marrakech-Tensift-Al Haouz Regional Council, taking 56 votes against 37 for the USFP’s Abdellali Doumou, a three-year mandate that preceded the 2015 territorial reorganization.
He has also sat in the House of Councillors, including within its bureau, and earlier served as PAM’s regional secretary-general. His 2014 interview mentions six years of service on the Higher Council for Education and a financial responsibility within the upper chamber.
After securing a seat in Al Haouz in the September 2021 elections, Touizi was named president of PAM’s parliamentary group in the House of Representatives, a role he held through the 2021-2026 legislature.
Party records also place him on the Committee on Education, Culture, and Communication. In the September 23, 2026 legislative elections, he was re-elected deputy in the Al Haouz constituency, within the Marrakech-Safi region. His mandate runs from 2026 to 2031.
The nomination followed internal deliberation. The PAM leadership weighed three names – Touizi, former Justice Minister Abdellatif Ouahbi, and Mohamed Sbari, who won a seat in the Guéliz district of Marrakech. Ouahbi had been the early favorite, but on Tuesday the party shifted to Touizi, and Ouahbi kept his post at the Justice Ministry.
Before the majority took shape, Touizi gave his reading of the process on 2M, speaking as a leading figure in the outgoing PAM group. He considered it unlikely that the government would form on the eve of the King’s opening of the new parliamentary session.
The priority, he argued, was to have a government before the October 20 deadline tied to the 2027 finance bill. He described the incoming majority as a return to the parties of the 1998 “Koutla,” a democratic and social bloc that had included the USFP and the PPS.
Touizi also set out the files he expects the next government to take up. He called for restoring credibility through a law against conflict of interest and an obligation for officials to declare their assets. He pointed to the need to review taxes on profits from the fuel trade, to tighten oversight of fuel companies, and to build a strategic fuel reserve covering six months of consumption.
On social policy, he questioned the current compensation system, arguing that price support should reach the poorest households first, and called for raising pensions to no less than MAD 3,000 ($300).
His record has drawn scrutiny as well. A public-funds case tied to municipal management in Aït Ourir, originating in a 2013 Court of Auditors report and a 2015 complaint, led to proceedings in December 2019 and a travel restriction in early 2020. On May 3, 2024, the Marrakech Court of Appeal acquitted him.
Separately, in October 2025, his remarks during debate on the 2026 Finance Bill about subsidized flour prompted an investigation ordered by the Rabat prosecutor, which he welcomed; he later said he had used a colloquial expression about falsified paperwork rather than a literal accusation.
His election completes a further step in assembling the leadership bodies of the House for the 12th legislature.
