Address of the Speaker of the House of Representatives at the Conclusion of the First Legislative Session under the Second Legislative Year of the Eleventh Legislative Term
Madam Minister,
Honorable colleagues,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
In accordance with the provisions of the Kingdom's Constitution, and following four months of work, we close today the First Legislative Session of the Second Legislative Year of the Eleventh Legislative Term at the level of plenary sittings, knowing that the Standing Committees and the Board of the House will pursue their work. Following the traditions, this sitting is an opportunity to review the achievements to which we all contributed, as Speakership, Board, Parliamentary Groups and Caucus, and Standing Committees.
All of us, within the organs of the House, as Majority and Opposition, worked to interact with the vital causes of our country and the concerns of the citizens. In this respect, we contributed, from our constitutional and institutional position, and through legislation, control, evaluation of public policies, and parliamentary diplomacy, to finding responses to these causes. In our work, we, of course, referred primarily to the directives of His Majesty King Mohammed VI, may Allah glorify him, particularly the ones included in the speech His Majesty addressed to the representatives of the nation at the opening of the First Legislative Session of the Legislative Year 2022-2023, as well as in the different royal speeches and directives on several national occasions, reflecting His Majesty's keenness to capitalize on the gains and accomplishments, and to lead Morocco towards the future with confidence and resolute will.
Honorable colleagues,
The developments compel us to recall, at this moment, the national and international context amidst which we worked and interacted, as well as the major aspects that characterized the past months. Within this framework, our country continued, under the enlightened leadership of His Majesty, may Allah glorify him, to entrench its regional, continental, and international positioning, and to consolidate its legitimate rights to anchor its territorial integrity through the fact that several influential powers in global decision-making, our brothers in Africa and the Arab and Muslim world, and our friends across the globe, reaffirmed the credibility and seriousness of the autonomy plan in the recovered southern provinces, as the only solution to the artificial conflict around the Kingdom's southern regions.
At the same time, the recognition of the efficiency of the economic, social, cultural, and sports development projects carried out in the southern provinces, and their positive impacts on the services rendered to the citizens and on the improvement of the quality of life in the urban and rural areas of the great south continues. Hence, we are proud of the reports that acknowledge this truth, emanating this time from those who always ignored the social and humanitarian profitability of public investments in these provinces, whose urban face has changed, making them an attraction for national and international investments and a model of quality life and prosperity.
These accomplishments are certainly achieved, in the first place, thanks to the high royal will to elaborate the projects and to allocate the financial resources required for this purpose, which are enormous, as well as the daily follow-up of His Majesty, on the ground, of these projects. This is also achieved thanks to the engagement of our brothers and sisters in the southern provinces in this development process and the mobilization of the elected and executive institutions, and all this, of course, in the light of the serenity and security provided by the Royal Armed Forces that protect our borders and counter any provocation. To these Forces and their Supreme Leader and Chief of General Staff, His Majesty the King, we express our respect, recognition, and gratitude, and likewise to all units of law enforcement forces.
Honorable colleagues,
Our country is achieving all these accomplishments at an exceptional world juncture with all its repercussions on national public expenditure, which is increasing due to the rise in prices of raw materials and foodstuffs in a disturbed world context marked by the flourishing of selfish and national tendencies.
However, the pace of development in the other provinces of the Kingdom is quite similar to what is achieved in the southern regions, which remain a model to follow as our country continues its advancement as a rising power. In this regard, the national economy is portraying, particularly in terms of exports, a performance worthy of appreciation despite the difficult global situation while we continue to strengthen the Moroccan social model through the generalization of social protection to give human rights their social and economic meaning and put the citizen at the heart of development.
If this Moroccan power, this new positioning of our country at the regional, continental, and international levels, and this national determination are a source of pride and pride; they infuriate, all the same, certain external parties who mobilize numerous means, media, and lobbies, and voices opposed to our country, for no reason but that our country advances resolutely based on the sovereign national decision towards a prominent world positioning, and based on deep-rooted history and an anchored democracy, and a solid institutional regime built on a constitutional monarchy enjoying all the historical, spiritual and political legitimacies. This anger and hostility culminated in a non-binding so-called recommendation or resolution by some political parties of the European Parliament on January 19, 2023, under the title of: "Respect for freedom of expression and opinion in Morocco."
I will briefly reaffirm our firm condemnation of this position and our rejection of lies and false accusations about our country. In this regard, all political and union forces represented in the Parliament rejected and condemned the resolution of the European Parliament, and the statement issued at the end of the special joint sitting of the two Houses of Parliament to discuss it on January 23, 2023, is witness to this. These acts were an eloquent and strong national response that complements the official and popular rejection of the interference in our internal affairs, as well as with the wise voices in the European countries that debunked the backgrounds of this hollow and miscalculated resolution.
Allow me, however, honorable colleagues, to remind the actors and endorsers of this hostility towards Morocco and the manufacturers of the lies against it within the European institution and to ask them:
- Does our country lack a secular, pluralistic, and free press of the same level as that of Europe? Our national media scene is rich with thousands of titles, and the age of a secular national newspaper in Morocco published to fight the odious protectorate is the same as a newspaper that appeared during the Nazi occupation of a country where it still appears presently. I do not intend to narrow the national media scene down to a national newspaper, but I would like to recall some historical facts and highlight them for those impressed by comparative approaches. This national media scene remains, despite the circumstances, and for almost a century, pluralist, and free, and reflects the political and cultural plurality of Moroccan society. Likewise, Moroccan journalists, who amount to the thousands, and real columnists in Morocco recognize the significance of freedom in the Kingdom and would never turn to foreigners.
- Similarly, the Moroccan political and partisan scene is rich with more than 30 political parties of all different political and ideological orientations whose history, prestige, organization, or intellectual affluence is no inferior to their European counterparts. In fact, the absolute majority of the political parties forming this House are at least 40 years old, and many of them celebrated the 80th anniversary of their creation.
Honorable colleagues,
I cited these two examples to demonstrate that we do not need lessons in freedom of opinion, pluralism, or the protection of human rights because we have institutions, mechanisms, and legislation that guarantee these rights. We are a nation that has been able to analyze its history and chart its path toward the future we are building. Therefore, I take this opportunity to reiterate the rejection of the nation's representatives of interference in our internal affairs and in our independent justice system, whose competence, ability, and courage are recognized, to the same degree that we reject the deliberate confusion between freedom of opinion, on the one hand, and the crimes of common law that the justice system examines, given its responsibility to guarantee the rights of the victims as a priority.
This position of the European Parliament will surely not prevent us from continuing our distinguished and responsible presence in international, regional, and continental multilateral parliamentary organizations, in which we continue to work to defend our vital causes and the interests of our country, especially the cause of territorial integrity, evoking in our work the values, principles, and doctrine of the national diplomacy led by His Majesty and whose vision is based on the defense of peace, security, development, and justice in international relations, the fight against terrorism, and the assumption of major responsibilities regarding migration and the fight against climate change.
Honorable colleagues,
This Moroccan positioning (which disturbs some parties) is not isolated from the strength of our democratic, economic, and social model. In fact, it is based on our institutional model and on the reforms we are carrying out, at the center of which is the House of Representatives, which accompanies and orients them in terms of legislation and control, and following the competencies entrusted to it by the Constitution in terms of evaluating public policies.
Thus, in interaction with the needs of society and the national context, and within the framework of the high royal directives, the House adopted several bills and interacted in the field of control with the concerns of society, in parallel with the continuation of the evaluation processes of several public policies.
In figures, the House of Representatives adopted 33 Government bills and three parliamentary bills. Although the discussion and adoption of the Finance Law take the most time during the first Session of each legislative year, this did not prevent the adoption of constituent laws that will significantly impact the economic, social, and human rights dynamics.
In this context, the House adopted a Government organic bill establishing the conditions and modalities of application of Article 133 of the Constitution and other articles relating to human rights. This is a text of obvious importance to guarantee and safeguard human rights by providing them with all the legal guarantees and procedures, and no objective and impartial observer can ignore the human rights objectives of this text and its positive impacts on strengthening human rights in their concrete dimensions and on achieving justice and equity.
Certainly, by adopting this text, our country ensures the improvement of democracy and the promotion of human rights in their different dimensions.
To consolidate social rights and the welfare state, the House adopted the Framework Law on the National Healthcare System and a law amending and supplementing the code of basic medical coverage. These two laws are linked to the social protection and health coverage project that has marked the reign of His Majesty King Mohammed VI, may Allah glorify and assist him. On this, observers agree that this is a peaceful revolution of the health offer and social coverage in our country, reinforcing solidarity, social cohesion, and social justice.
In accordance with the high royal directives on the opening of the Legislative Session, the House adopted a Government framework bill on investment, whose implementation will certainly launch a new dynamic in national and foreign investment with positive repercussions on the industrialization of the country, the upgrading of the service sector, the guarantee of productive jobs that ensure dignity, the increase of the attractiveness of the country, the addition of a territorial dimension to investment, and the growth of added export values.
To strengthen the national policy in the field of green economy and energy production from renewable sources, we adopted a law on the self-production of electricity, which will regulate the production of energy by individuals, reduce the costs of electricity production, and launch a new dynamic in the sector and the activities related to production.
This national legislation will undoubtedly strengthen our country's pioneering position in the global approach to fighting climate imbalances, which embodies the spirit of Morocco's commitment to the international community and proves our concern to fulfill our international obligations.
In addition to these constitutive laws, we passed bills relating to justice, public entities, and tourism, as well as many international bilateral and multilateral conventions, which further express our country's reputation and position on the international scene.
The examination and voting of these laws were a valuable opportunity for a meaningful debate between the legislative and executive branches, which has enriched these legislations and produced consensus around them, as shown by the unanimous approval of 80% of them.
With our call to read this record from the perspective of quality, we note that the record of the legislative initiatives of the members of the House that we adopted, meaning parliamentary bills, is still below our common aspiration. We hope that the new provisions we included in the Rules of Procedure that we adopted at the end of this Session will allow us to fill this gap.
Honorable colleagues,
The House diversified its mechanisms of control of the Government's action guaranteed by the Constitution, namely, oral and written questions, exploratory missions, questioning of ministers and heads of public institutions by the Standing Committees, and discussion of the reports of constitutional institutions and governance bodies.
In this respect, the oral questions addressed by the members of the House to the Government interacted with the most important issues for society since 410 questions were scheduled, including 73 urgent ones during the 13 weekly sittings of the House, as well as three sittings during which the Head of Government answered 15 of the 18 thematic questions addressed to him. These sittings, as you know, dealt with the general policies related to investment, the finance law, its context and stakes, the water policy in the light of the lack of precipitation and snow, and the means to remedy the water deficits and to rationalize the use of water.
Besides, written questions were, as usual, used as a mechanism to question government members on local and sectoral issues. In this regard, the number of these questions reached 1806, while the Government responded to 1511 of them, 64%.
Whether it is the monthly plenary sittings devoted to general policies or the weekly sittings, we were all keen, Opposition and Majority, in the House and the Government, to seize these opportunities for dialogue that allows the production of solutions to our country's issues and that make the intersection of visions productive of conclusions, given that the essential thing is that this debate places society's concerns at the center of institutional action. This is one of the characteristics of Moroccan democracy and the national institutional model, where the constitutional institutions are in charge of managing differences and elaborating solutions to problems.
The examination of national issues, public policies, the situation of public institutions, and the questioning of ministers and heads of these institutions by the Parliamentary Committees strengthen the exercise of the control competence by the House.
Thus, the Parliamentary Standing Committees examined 22 themes that were the subject of 35 requests from the various Parliamentary Groups and Caucus and discussed the reports of the constitutional institutions and governance bodies. These topics are either timely in society or strategic for economic, scientific, cultural, and educational development.
As part of exercising the same control competence, we, as the Board of the House, Chairpersons of the Parliamentary Groups and Caucus, and Chairpersons of the Parliamentary Committees, ensured that the exercise of this control approach is characterized by efficiency, effectiveness, and profitability, avoiding squandering and rationalizing the institution's efforts by verifying the conditions for granting authorization to the said exploratory missions, in order to make them productive in terms of diagnosis, recommendations, and suggestions. It is on this basis that the Board of the House authorized for this Session the conduct of three missions that focused on: 1) the situation of university campuses, 2) highways, and 3) quarries after discussing the report of the mission that worked on the Oum Errabiâ river estuary at the Commission and plenary sitting. This discussion produced the idea of creating the Agency Of The Oum Errabiâ River, taking into account the impacts that will have on the development of the basin and its development to make it attractive for investment.
For its part, the exploratory mission on the operation "Marhaba" concluded the discussion of its report at the level of the competent Commission, and the Board of the House will decide on the fate of the said report soon.
On the other hand, we discussed the reports of constitutional institutions and governance bodies. In this respect, I would like to remind you that the Board of the House has decided that the reports of constitutional institutions and the governing bodies should be referred to the parliamentary committees responsible for examining these reports to determine their fate at a later stage, in compliance with the purposes of the Constitution related firstly to the constitutional status of these institutions; secondly to the implementation of the principle of cooperation and complementarity between powers; and thirdly, to the richness and importance of these reports.
Concerning the evaluation of public policies, which requires a long-term effort and numerous hearings of the various stakeholders, beneficiaries, public actors, and relevant groups of professional organizations and citizens, I would like to inform you that the thematic group in charge of evaluating the administration reform plan concluded its work by adopting the report that crowned its work and referring it to the Board of the House, which will schedule its discussion in the first weeks of the next Legislative Session, hoping that its debate at the plenary sitting will be useful and productive of the effect we aspire to. For its part, the thematic group in charge of evaluating the water policy completed its work by preparing the initial version of the report, which the Board will schedule for the next Session too.
In turn, the thematic group responsible for evaluating the implementation and impact of the law on combating violence against women is being structured around a central issue in the concerns of our country. As you know, for the first time, the House creates a thematic group to evaluate the implementation and impact of a law.
Overall, in the exercise of our evaluation competence, we address very important policies in the national and international context, which requires the realization of evaluation processes with objective and efficient conclusions. Whether we are talking about administration, water, or women's rights, we are dealing with policies that enjoy the highest royal solicitude and are the object of societal expectations while being at the heart of current international issues.
Honorable colleagues,
I apologize if I dwelt on these facts for a long time, but the context, the events, and the time oblige us all to review our achievements and to examine together what we can improve or catch up on while capitalizing on the gains we have made.
With this vision in mind, we worked together to make the necessary amendments to the House's Rules of Procedure, reflected in 300 procedures, rules, and processes for compliance with organic laws, including provisions for managing our institutional work, our relationship with other constitutional institutions and governing bodies, performance evaluation, attendance control, conflict of interest management, the Code of Ethics, communication with the public, and other reforms.
While we were discussing these amendments for almost a year, we did not only take into account the shortcomings we noticed in daily practice, the observations of the Constitutional Court, the requirements of compliance with the organic laws adopted since the last amendment of the Rules of Procedure in 2017, but also referred to the requirements of 21st-century democracy concerning inclusion and consultation.
In fact, the consensus reached among the different components of the House on the said amendments, which I consider fundamental, reflects the consensus that characterizes our institutional action and our interaction with the major issues of our country.
It is this same collective spirit that marked our work in foreign relations and parliamentary diplomacy, evoking our country's foreign policy under the enlightened leadership of His Majesty the King, and demonstrating responsibility, vigilance, and proactivity in defending our country's vital issues, especially the question of our territorial integrity.
In addition, the House took part in several conferences and thematic meetings organized by international, continental, and regional parliamentary organizations. In this regard, I want to praise the quality of participation, discipline, and vigilance displayed by our parliamentary delegations, which curbed attempts to thwart certain bodies to serve specific agendas in a serious deviation from the norms governing the functioning of multilateral parliamentary organizations.
In addition, the House hosted many parliamentary fora, and we received several parliamentary delegations of different levels.
Honorable colleagues,
The House entrenched its traditions of openness to public opinion, journalists, and visitors, especially to children and youth.
As part of its responsibilities in implementing reform, the House took several initiatives, including the organization of two seminars on the prospects for reform of the press and media sector, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the National Dialogue on Media and Society, hosted by the Parliament in 2010. Through this seminar, which was attended by professionals, regulatory bodies, and professional organizations, we wanted to launch initiatives to reform the sector to keep pace with the transformations it is undergoing while protecting the rights of professionals, society, and citizens and also working to enable media to accompany the development dynamics and reforms undertaken by our country.
Within the framework of the consolidation of participatory democracy, the House organized a seminar on petitions, with the participation of several civil society organizations, in order to promote citizen initiatives in the field of participatory democracy.
Moreover, in the pursuit of our efforts to ensure that our work is based on accurate and recognized scientific information, we carried out a sociological field study on the theme "Public values and their institutional implementation: evolutions and expectations of Moroccans," which we entrusted, under the direction and support of the House, to numerous Moroccan sociologists, and which was carried out under scientific standards, especially in terms of the value system of institutions, including the family, administrations, and enterprises.
This study, which identifies the expectations of Moroccans, will be presented tomorrow, Wednesday, February 8, at the seat of the House. It will undoubtedly help to put in place a number of choices that will meet these aspirations.
On the other hand, I would not miss this opportunity to recall the beautiful national moments we experienced together thanks to what the national soccer team achieved during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, moments during which we felt a flood of patriotism and pride in being Moroccan.
The achievement of the national team, the specificity of the Moroccan public, its great passion for soccer, and its talent to express joy and belonging to the homeland have anchored the international image of Morocco as a deep-rooted country attached to its intangible values and open to universal values without compromising its roots and national culture. In fact, it has strengthened and consolidated the confidence in our country and its sons.
The celebration of our national team's achievement reflected the image of a united Morocco attached to its institutions and national figures, headed by His Majesty King Mohammed VI, may Allah assist him, who has been leading Morocco for a long time to face all those who want to attack its territory, its freedom, its institutions, or its choices.
I thank you all for your contribution to the results we have achieved together and for your attention.