Lachguar draws clear lines on women's rights, opposition, and democratic balance

Driss Lachguar, First Secretary of Morocco's Union Socialiste des Forces Populaires (USFP), delivered a wide-ranging and assertive television appearance on April 23, 2026, addressing the country's most pressing political questions with unusual candor. Speaking on a prime-time political program, the veteran socialist leader covered the Sahara file, social dialogue, governmental performance, democratic pluralism, and the internal state of the Moroccan left, offering assessments that combined recognition of institutional achievements with pointed criticism of missed opportunities.

Sahara: from anxiety to diplomatic momentum

Lachguar opened with the issue he described as historically the most consequential for Morocco: territorial integrity and the status of the Saharan provinces. He recalled that for decades, his party leadership would follow United Nations proceedings with profound unease, uncertain of the outcome each session might bring. That posture, he said, has fundamentally changed.

He pointed to UN Security Council Resolution 2797 as a qualitative turning point. For the first time, he argued, a Security Council resolution has formally endorsed the autonomy framework as the credible basis for resolving the dispute, rather than treating it as one proposal among several. He drew a sharp distinction between the upcoming UN session and previous rounds: the next session, he said, is not a deliberative vote but an implementation phase for a resolution already adopted. He called the conflict an artificially prolonged crisis sustained by regional actors whose strategic interests run contrary to Maghreb stability.

Social dialogue: a process praised, outcomes criticized

On labor relations, Lachguar offered a nuanced position that resisted easy categorization. He expressed genuine satisfaction with the institutionalization of social dialogue, which he attributed in part to the legacy of former Prime Minister Abderrahmane El Youssoufi and the USFP's earlier periods in government. The structure, he said, represents a durable achievement. The results, however, do not.

He argued that concrete gains for workers, the middle class, and vulnerable households remain far below what citizens were entitled to expect. On the contentious issue of overtime regulations, he rejected characterizations of the public debate as uniformly populist, insisting instead that the populism lies in how certain political actors exploit the issue for electoral gain without accepting any share of responsibility. He noted pointedly that several parties now loudest in their criticism of the overtime decision were members of the government that adopted it, calling their current posture politically incoherent.

His proposed remedy was straightforward: commission a rigorous independent study, publish the findings, and let the government make its decision within its constitutional mandate. If citizens reject the outcome, they retain the democratic mechanism of the ballot box.

Government record: selective credit, systematic critique

Lachguar refused to deliver a blanket negative assessment of the current government's record. He acknowledged the expansion of medical coverage to millions of previously uninsured Moroccans, the doubling of public investment compared to the start of the mandate, and improved foreign direct investment figures. These, he said, cannot be denied in good faith.

The critique that followed was, however, comprehensive. On employment, he measured the government's stated target of one million net new jobs against the actual outcome, noting that agricultural job losses driven by drought years produced a deeply negative net balance. He cited a government minister's own on-air admission that employment performance would merit a score of ten out of one hundred.

On economic growth, he observed that projections of more than four percent annual expansion gave way to an average of approximately 3.4 percent across the mandate. On female economic participation, the failure was starker still: the government had pledged to raise the female activity rate to 30 percent, but its own assessment confirmed it reached only 19 percent, a regression from pre-mandate levels.

Democratic balance and the risk of political monopoly

Lachguar reserved some of his strongest language for what he described as a structural threat to Moroccan democracy. He warned against the concentration of political power in the hands of three or four parties that simultaneously control the central government, regional councils, and elected bodies at every institutional level. Should the next legislative elections produce results in which all leading parties remain within the governing coalition, he argued, the country would effectively have dismantled democratic competition.

He described this scenario as political monoculture, a state in which opposition ceases to function as a genuine counterweight and becomes a façade. His call was for institutional rebalancing, guaranteed space for a robust opposition, and the protection of political pluralism as a precondition for any sustainable democratic life.

The motion of censure and the limits of opposition unity

On the failed motion of censure, Lachguar clarified that the USFP drafted and initiated the motion with a defined objective: to compel a government that regularly invokes its popular mandate to appear before parliament and account for its record. The goal, he stressed, was political accountability, not the collapse of the executive.

The initiative stalled over competing calculations among opposition parties. Some preferred parliamentary inquiry commissions, a route Lachguar considered constitutionally unsuited to the current institutional framework. Others made their participation conditional on including the Justice and Development Party in the opposition bloc, a condition the USFP rejected on principled grounds.

"We cannot work with an opposition that penalizes women in their rights and still does not understand that a woman is the equal of a man in rights and duties," he said, articulating what he described as a fundamental ideological boundary, not a tactical calculation.

Social democracy in name versus social democracy in practice

One of the evening's most analytically precise passages came when Lachguar addressed the appropriation of social-democratic language by parties whose governing choices, he argued, remain structurally liberal. He noted that the USFP's program has effectively become the rhetorical reference point for parties that previously operated within an explicitly liberal ideological framework.

The distinction he drew was not semantic but practical. He cited the distribution of public investment support as evidence: tens of billions of dirhams directed toward large corporations and major business groups, against a figure he described as derisory for small and medium enterprises. He argued that social democracy is not a campaign label but a governing philosophy measured in budget priorities, the design of social protection systems, and the state's relationship with its most economically exposed citizens.

Party organization, diaspora representation, and the left's fragmentation

Lachguar addressed the USFP's internal condition directly, citing 55,000 dues-paying members, an extensive network of local branches and sectoral organizations, and a significant syndical presence across key economic sectors. He pushed back against narratives of organizational decay, arguing that a party's social rootedness cannot be measured by electoral scores alone.

He described the USFP's work within the Socialist International as a form of parallel diplomacy that has produced concrete results for the national cause, including blocking Polisario representation at a major congress in Barcelona through the presence of a Sahrawi pro-autonomy civil society association.

On diaspora participation, he committed publicly to advocating for a dedicated national electoral list for the approximately five million Moroccans residing abroad, modeled on the regional lists currently reserved for women. Asked directly whether a first-place USFP finish in the next legislative elections would translate into action on this commitment, he answered affirmatively.

He acknowledged fragmentation on the Moroccan left as a real and self-inflicted problem, rooted in what he called historic episodes of political ego. He described his own personal outreach to the Party of Progress and Socialism to propose a federation of left forces, an effort he said has not yet succeeded, partly because of conduct during the motion of censure process that undermined the conditions for mutual trust.