Rabat – Mustapha El Khalfi, the minister of communication and the official government spokesperson, has the most “notoriety” among Moroccans according to a new survey by the Tariq Ibn Ziyad Initiative and the Morocco-based Averty social polling institute.
The Moroccan magazine Telquel published the results of the poll on Monday as the fifth edition of the annual political barometer, which measures the popularity of the ruling government and national civic engagement in the first two to three months of each studied year. 1,098 Moroccan aged 18 years and over, distributed in all regions of Morocco were surveyed for the poll, Averty said in a statement to the magazine.
Seventy-eight percent of Moroccans could readily recognize El Khalfi’s name and vaguely describe his role in head of government Abdelilah Benkirane’s government. The survey did not attribute a cause for the Justice and Development Party-affiliated (PJD) minister’s high brand awareness, but Huffington Post Maroc’s analysis said his name recognition could have been caused by his willingness to talk to the press about “hot” subjects, garnering strong responses from Moroccans, both positive and negative.
Just behind El Khalfi, Aziz Rabbah, the PJD minister of transportation and mayor of Kenitra, held name recognition with 77 percent of Moroccans.
Mohamed El Ouafa, Benkirane’s minister delegate in charge of general affairs and governance came in third, having a reputation with 75 percent of the surveyed citizens – down from 81 percent last year. El Ouafa, who was previously the minister of education before the head of government rehired a new cabinet in 2013, is a member of the Independence Party.
Next came Nabil Benabdellah, the minister of housing and urbanization and general secretary of the Party of Progress and Socialism (74 percent name recognition), and justice minister Mustapha Ramid, who tied with health minister Houcine Louardi (73 percent). Foreign minister Salaheddine Mezouar (71 percent) and the current minister of education Lahcen Daoudi (67 percent) followed.
The lesser known ministers did not change since the previous iteration of the poll: Mohamed Abbou, the minister of commerce (12 percent), Mamoun Bouhdoud, minister delegate to the minister of industry and trade (13 percent), Fatema Marouane, the minister of arts and the social economy (18 percent), Driss Dahak, secretary general of the government (20 percent) and Abdelaziz El Omari, minister of parliamentary relations and civil society (25 percent).
