Interior Minister Abdelouafi Laftit said that draft organic law No. 25.23, which amends and supplements organic law No. 27.11 relating to the House of Representatives, aims primarily to “establish and strengthen the rules necessary for the ethical conduct of elections for members of this council, and to establish additional mechanisms to enhance the representation of youth and women within it, while improving the methods of managing electoral processes.”

During a meeting of the Interior, Territorial Communities, Housing and Urban Policy Committee of the House of Representatives on Wednesday, Laftit stressed that “the most prominent major challenges that must be addressed in the upcoming House of Representatives elections are those related to establishing the rules that will definitively improve national political and electoral life.”

Laftit stressed that “achieving this goal is a conviction shared by all concerned parties with the aim of preserving the reputation of the parliamentary institution before national public opinion as well as at the international level, within the context of a comprehensive vision that takes into account the level of maturity reached by the Moroccan experience in managing electoral processes.”

The same official stated, in front of a group of parliamentarians, that this text aims to “activate rules for ethical conduct during the various stages of the electoral process, including the period for submitting nominations, throughout the election campaign, on election day, and throughout the entire electoral period.”

In an implicit reaction to the controversy sparked by the fall of a number of “representatives of the nation” in a series of legal proceedings, the top official at the Ministry of the Interior said that “this text prevents anyone being prosecuted after being caught in the act of committing certain crimes, in addition to others against whom appeal and initial rulings have been issued for a felony, from running for membership in the first parliamentary chamber.”

He added: “This project stipulates that the effects of the penalty be intensified for elected officials who have been dismissed from their mandated responsibilities, by extending the period of their prohibition from running for office to two full mandated terms, in the hope that this measure will contribute to urging elected officials to adopt the qualities of integrity and honesty in managing the affairs of the territorial communities that they head.”

The same official revealed that it was proposed to “cancel the restriction that was adopted on the occasion of the 2021 general elections, which relates to preventing the combination of membership in the House of Representatives with the presidency of a prefecture, region or a major municipality council with a population exceeding 300,000, by reopening the possibility of combining the status of a parliamentary deputy with the presidency of a prefecture, region or a major municipality council,” justifying this by “benefiting from experiences and competencies with added value.”

According to the entity that prepared it, this text included a proposal to “strip any deputy who is under arrest for a period equal to or exceeding six months, based on a referral from the Constitutional Court by the Public Prosecution at the court to which the case is presented or by the authority responsible for receiving declarations of candidacy.”

Laftit continued: “To confirm the strong will of the public authority to move forward in the direction of qualifying national political and electoral life, this draft law proposes amending 28 out of 32 articles, which define the penalties for electoral crimes contained in the organic law relating to the House of Representatives, where the penalties of imprisonment and financial fines have been increased to at least double.”

The meeting, hosted by the Committee on the Interior, Territorial Communities, Housing and Urban Policy of the House of Representatives, was dedicated to presenting the draft regulatory laws under which Regulatory Law No. 27.11 relating to the House of Representatives and Regulatory Law No. 29.11 relating to political parties will be amended, as well as their counterpart No. 57.11 relating to general electoral lists, referendum operations and the use of social media sites.