El Yazghi elected first secretary of USFP

Mohamed El Yazghi was elected Friday first secretary of the Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP/leftist), the major party in the government coalition, to succeed to Abderrahmane Youssoufi, who announced last month his decision to step down from the party's leadership that lasted nearly ten years.

Youssoufi, a long time opponent, who served as Moroccan prime minister from March 1998 to October 2002 and head of the coalition government in what was called "government of alternation" decided to withdraw from the USFP and from politics.

The new elected leader, 68 years old, was a former lawyer in the bar of Paris, and then Rabat, and is serving since 2002 as minister of land use planning, water and environment. He was elected member of USFP's political bureau in 1975 and first deputy-secretary of the party in 1992 after the death of the party's former leader Abderrahim Bouabid.

For his part, speaker of the House of Representatives, Abdelouahed Radi, was elected deputy first secretary of the party.

USFP was founded in 1975 and was a long time opposition party before it was represented in the government.