These bills, adopted by a majority of votes, are Organic Bill 4.21 amending and supplementing Organic Law 27.11 on the House of Representatives; Organic Bill 05.21 amending and supplementing Organic Law 28.11 on the House of Advisors; Organic Bill 06.21 modifying and supplementing Organic Law 59.11 on the election of the members of the councils of the territorial authorities; and Organic Bill 07.21 modifying and supplementing Organic Law 29.11 on political parties, according to a press release from the House of Representatives.
Presenting the bills, Interior Minister Abdelouafi Laftit highlighted the Government's will to draft the legislative texts that regulate elections within "constructive consensus," highlighting the main stages of consultations with political stakeholders following "a participatory approach that is based on committed neutrality and shared responsibility."
Laftit, quoted by the statement, noted that these legislative texts aim to advance the Moroccan electoral system with a view to keeping pace with the developments and dynamic marking the Moroccan society. They also aim to enrich the texts in force with more electoral guarantees and support the credibility and moralization of the electoral process.
Organic Bill 04.21 provides for the replacement of the national electoral constituency with regional constituencies to guarantee a wider representation of women in the legislative institution. The Bill also stipulates the political commitment of elected representatives through revoking the membership to the House of Representatives of any deputy who renounces its political affiliation. It also enacts several measures that aim to moralize electoral campaigns and value the parliamentary action through increasing the cases of incompatibility with the membership to the House of Representatives.
The main amendment included in Organic Bill 05.21 stipulates that the most represented employers' associations are to keep a parliamentary group within the House of Advisors, while ensuring its independence.
The most prominent amendments introduced by Organic Bill 06.21 concern regulating the procedure of running in the elections of the councils of prefectures and provinces and promoting women's representation in these councils and in the communal councils. It also introduces other improvements that concern the election of the members of councils of communes. The Bill devotes one-third of the seats in each prefectural or provincial council to women while also allowing them to run for the other two thirds on an equal basis to men.
The House of Representatives also adopted Organic Bill 07.21, which introduced prominent innovations that lay the necessary legislative foundations to implement the high directives of HM King Mohammed VI to increase the government grants allocated to parties to accompany them and incite them to modernize their working mechanisms, in a way that advances the quality of their performance and of legislations and public policies, while allocating a portion of those grants to the competencies employed in the areas of reflection, analysis, and innovation.
The plenary session, chaired by Lower House Speaker Habib El Malki, was marked by statements of the representatives of the parliamentary groups and caucus and other deputies. The latter voiced their positions regarding the amendments and articles included in the Organic Bills examined, the statement concluded.