اخبار المغرب – وطن نيوز
اخر اخبار المغرب اليوم – اخبار المغرب العاجلة
W6nnews.com ==== وطن === تاريخ النشر – 2026-02-22 12:00:00
After we saw in the first and second parts the extent of the discrepancy in numbers and the conflict of positions between the majority and the opposition regarding the reasons for the faltering of the parliamentary legislative initiative and the outcome of the second parliamentary chamber, we now arrive at an attempt to understand the technical mechanisms that control the quality of these texts and the role of the legal “gatekeepers” in ensuring their harmony with the national system. The final part of the Hespress file reviews the intersections of visions between the legislative institution, which is trying to structure its initiatives through a technical committee to improve law proposals, and the General Secretariat of the government, which is responsible for guarding “legal security” and the harmony of texts. But the question remains: What should be done in the face of everything that the newspaper surrounds in this parliamentary-constitutional debate? “Gatekeeper” Nadia El-Tohamy, Vice President of the House of Representatives and member of the House of Representatives’ office, said, “Article 179 of the House’s bylaws stipulates that the House’s office allocates a meeting at least every month to study the issues of law proposals referred to it by the members of the House. Every proposal that it finds affects the balance of the state’s finances or does not fall within the areas of legislation specified in the chapters of the Constitution shall notify its owner in writing of that, and the proposer has the right, upon receiving this notice, to cling to his proposal, withdraw it, or seize it.” Draft it, its subject matter, and return it to this office.” Al-Tohamy explained, in response to a request for clarifications submitted by Hespress newspaper, that “the Council’s office created a committee working under its direct supervision, whose mission is to ensure the study of the proposals presented and to show the extent of their consistency with the provisions of the Constitution, especially its articles 71 and 77; a mechanism that was not stipulated except in the amendment of the internal regulations of 2023, with the aim of improving law proposals and providing assistance to members of the Council, teams, groups and unaffiliated representatives, to control the legal drafting.” And avoiding the government’s comments on the form and topics of these proposals.” The same representative added, “This experience bore fruit, as the Council’s office reviewed more than 140 proposals and provided notes regarding most of them to improve them. The various parliamentary teams and groups received them with open arms, fine-tuned their wording, and returned them to the office in complete condition, awaiting study and voting on them in committees and plenary sessions,” noting that “the government bears political responsibility regarding them.” Moreover, the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives stressed that “these exceptional efforts aim primarily to fill the legal and technical gaps that the government may use as an excuse to reject parliamentary legislative initiatives,” stressing that “improving the drafting and ensuring constitutional and financial conformity would enhance the negotiating power of the teams, and put the executive authority before its political responsibilities in interacting positively with the proposals of the male and female representatives.” In the same context, a senior source in the House of Representatives considered that “legislative initiative is a right guaranteed to representatives constitutionally, and is dealt with in accordance with the rules of the internal regulations. However, the submission of 469 texts in one legislative term remains a frightening number that gives a false impression, as if Morocco is suffering from an acute legislative vacuum.” The same source explained that “most of the texts do not exceed one article, which is a sound underlined issue, but marketing them to public opinion as structured law proposals suggests a legislative effort.” On the other hand, Rachid Al-Madwar, an expert in parliamentary law, in his discussion with Hespress, invoked the constitutional document, primarily in relation to the issue with Parliament, and argued that there was originally “a structural imbalance between Parliament and the government at the level of legislative initiative, derived from the philosophy of ‘parliamentary rationalization’ on which the Moroccan Parliament was founded since the first constitution.” Despite guaranteeing the government and members of Parliament the right to initiate laws on an equal footing, Al-Madwar cautioned that “the stipulation that the Council’s office has jurisdiction over the agenda, with the necessity of including ‘in precedence and according to the government’s arrangement’ its accepted projects and proposals, makes the government effectively dominant, which gives permanent precedence to its projects at the expense of parliamentary proposals, especially the unacceptable ones, so programming them is difficult without being impossible.” In order to alleviate this imbalance and reconsider the parliamentary initiative, the same expert explained that “the 2011 Constitution added a crucial paragraph that guarantees a minimum space for parliamentarians’ proposals on the agenda of the House of Representatives and Councilors, to be passed to the plenary sessions without distinction between a majority and the opposition. Chapter 82 stipulates allocating ‘at least one day per month to study proposed laws’, including those from the opposition.” In contrast, statistics provided by Hespress indicate that no more than 20 sessions have been held for each legislative period since the adoption of this constitutional requirement. According to the spokesman, this requires “greater attention to its activation,” and therefore he pointed out that part of the responsibility for the delay in the law proposals “falls on the parliamentarians themselves, especially the Council office and the committee offices, resulting from an improper understanding of Chapter 82 related to the agenda.” The former member of the Constitutional Council (Constitutional Court) stated that “when the Constitution stipulated that its accepted projects and proposals be included in ‘priority and according to the government’s order’, it did not prevent the programming of the remaining unacceptable proposals; the government’s right is limited to precedence and order only.” Al-Madwar continued: “If the legislator wanted to limit programming to what is acceptable, he would have explicitly stipulated that. Therefore, suspending programming proposals on the government’s approval would be in violation of the constitution, in letter and spirit.” An official source in the House of Representatives responded by confirming that “the procedures taken by the Council’s office are carried out in agreement with the members of the office, and are often completed unanimously without the need for a decision by vote,” considering that “the procedures are managed in light of the constitutional requirements and the Council’s internal regulations, but sometimes the crowded agenda may affect the failure to hold public sessions,” pointing out that “the procedures are respected and the Council’s meetings on the texts submitted are regular.” Towards a purely technical reading, in this constitutional and legal debate, the newspaper turned to the General Secretariat of the Government, which warned that its intervention “is limited within the framework of the inter-ministerial technical committee created for this purpose to examining the proposed laws legally and technically, with the aim of ensuring that they comply with the principles related to respecting the constitutionality of legal rules and their hierarchy, adhering to the principle of separation between the field of law and the field of regulation, taking into account Morocco’s international obligations, and scrutinizing the requirements related to the entry into force of the text.” Abdul Khaleq Al-Dahmani, a legal advisor to the departments in the General Secretariat of Government, explained that the institution’s role also lies in “verifying the integrity, accuracy, clarity and readability of the legislative drafting, in a way that ensures the harmony of the proposed texts with the rest of the components of the national legal system, and reduces the risks of conflict, ambiguity or difficulty in application, especially in the context of major legislative reforms and the problems they raise related to managing the transitional stages.” In addition, Al-Dahmani stated that “the interests of the General Secretariat of the Government, when studying the proposals for laws presented to it, take into account judicial jurisprudence, especially the decisions of the constitutional judiciary, in accordance with their authority established under the last paragraph of Chapter 134 of the Constitution, as well as the decisions of the Court of Cassation and the recommendations of relevant national and international bodies and institutions. They can also seek reference from comparative legislation and jurisprudential jurisprudence.” This statement showed the degree of complexity involved in the task of examining Parliament’s initiatives, but the legal advisor to the departments in the General Secretariat of the Government said that “this role is exercised within the framework of complete respect for the powers of the legislative authority and the principle of freedom of parliamentary legislative initiative, and without any interference in the content of the political choices or orientations included in the law proposals, given that monitoring legitimacy remains purely legal oversight that does not affect the essence of the legislative decision.” The same spokesman continued: “This practice aims to contribute to improving the quality of legislation, enhancing its clarity and enforceability, and consolidating the stability of legal rules, in a way that serves the public interest and enshrines the principle of the rule of law.” The interesting thing that the aforementioned advisor reveals relates to the novelty of the proposals and the originality of their content. He recorded that “it became clear to the General Secretariat of the Government, through the exercise of its duties within the framework of the Technical Committee for Study of Law Proposals, that some of the submitted law proposals include, sometimes, requirements that are not consistent with the components of the national legal bloc, whether in terms of respecting the constitutionality of legal rules and their hierarchy, adhering to the principle of separation between the field of law and the field of regulation, and taking into account Morocco’s international obligations.” Since the exercise of Parliament’s rights in this aspect remains, in principle, restricted to the constitutionally defined areas of law and the necessity of respecting the rules of harmony, the need for legislation, and the unity of the legal system, studying them may reveal legal or practical problems that prevent the adoption of these texts. Among them, in addition to what was mentioned above, is “the inclusion of the subject of the proposal within the legislation that the government committed to reviewing in advance, or the link of the proposal to comprehensive reforms that require a participatory approach and broad consultations.” What to do? In the context of searching for solutions, Mustafa Paytas, the Minister Delegate in charge of relations with Parliament and the official spokesman for the government, said in a statement to Hespress that his ministry “is currently engaged in disseminating the integrated information system used in dealing with parliamentary questions, to also include the field of legislative work, with the aim of facilitating communication and coordination with the concerned parties in this field, as well as facilitating access to information related to the legislative initiative, whether governmental or parliamentary.” For his part, Mohamed Shouki, head of the National Rally of Independents, suggested “enhancing the presence of law proposals in the legislative scene by adopting a special legislative procedure independent of those approved in draft laws, to avoid crowded agendas and the pressure of current deadlines,” calling for “adopting a specific numerical ceiling for the proposals of each parliamentary team to ensure quality and quality, as it is not right for one team to submit more than 100 proposals that lack legal effect, and whose goal is merely to inflate the digital tally.” At the forefront of these necessary reforms, the opposition components agree on “the necessity of establishing binding time limits for studying law proposals, whether within the permanent committees or at the level of referring them to the government for expression of opinion,” considering that “the absence of these deadlines is one of the most important reasons for obstructing a large number of legislative initiatives, and turns the right to initiative into a formal right.” The parliamentary opposition also proposes, through the heads of the teams, Abdul Rahim Shahid, Idriss Al-Santisi, Rashid Hamouni, and Abdullah Bouwanou, “strengthening technical and research support for the parliamentary teams, devoting mechanisms for prior coordination with the government,” and finding “an appropriate way to oblige the government to attend sessions discussing law proposals and express its position in person, so it will either persuade or be convinced.”
