2023-05-02 18:00:42
On Thursday, the Administrative Court in Rabat begins to consider a lawsuit facing the mayor of the capital, Asma Galalo, due to amendments to the internal rules of its council.
These amendments affected Articles 11 and 33 in the first place. The opposition believes that the manner in which changes were made to these articles would limit the ability of the minority to highlight its positions on the majority administration.
Both the Justice and Development Party team and the Democratic Left Federation coalition team, both from the opposition in the Capital Collective Council, filed a lawsuit in this direction, seeking to obtain a judicial decision to stop the implementation of the collective decision on the internal system, and then cancel it at a later stage.
The Rabat Council holds its periodic meeting on the occasion of the May session, on the same day that the judiciary begins to consider the case filed by the Justice and Development Party team, while on the following day, Friday, it considers the case filed by members of the Left Federation coalition in this group.
The original version of Article 11 allowed council members to address written questions to the mayor of the city, but its amendment, which was approved, set limits on their number, and imposed their distribution according to the principle of proportional representation of the teams in the council.
As for Article 33, the amendments that affected it limited the freedom to film the council’s meetings, whether for members or the media.
The opposition considers the amendment to Article 33 of the internal law to prohibit filming or direct transmission by telephone or any other means during the council’s sessions, “withholding information from the citizen, an attack on the constitutional right to access information and an attack on the right of the residents of Rabat to see what is being promoted in the sessions.” and an end to local representative democracy.
Likewise, this opposition believes that the communal council of Rabat took a decision to amend Article 11 of the bylaws of the communal council by capping the total number of written questions during each session within the limits of 20 questions, and distributing them according to the relative representation of each team, “a violation of Article 46 of Organizational Law 14 / 113, which did not specify a ceiling for written questions as a control mechanism, and an area for raising various issues that concern the management of public affairs. Moreover, according to her, this amendment “obstructs the role of Council members in communicating the voices, observations, and aspirations of citizens of different backgrounds, which leads to emptying representative democratic mechanisms of their communicative goals and objectives, and striking the rights and freedom of expression guaranteed to Council members.”
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