August 21, 2013
Domestic
and international attention has focused on Morocco's King Mohamed VI following
a recent royal pardon of 48 jailed Spaniards, including a convicted pedophile.
While the king’s error caused an outpouring of anger among Moroccans (and has
forced him to revoke the pardon), more fundamental and structural political
issues about the role of the palace in the country's politics and governance
are rising. The country’s most recent constitutional reform appeared to give
more power to the elected government and parliament; however, vague and
contradictory passages and the imposition of restrictions on the rights and
powers of elected bodies were included to ensure the palace maintained a free
hand to interpret the constitution to keep the balance of power in the country
in its favor.
Recent
events provide a perfect example of this; six months ago, the House of
Representatives started preparing a draft bill on the structure and conduct of
the parliamentary investigative committees. However, the government’s
secretariat general, which does not receive orders directly from the prime
minister but rather from “the supreme bodies” (referring to the palace), caught
the house—and especially the legislative committee—by surprise when it ratified
and introduced its own bill on the topic. This completely disregarded the
efforts previously made by the legislative committee and dealt a big blow both
to the legislative process and to Lahbib Choubani, Minister of Relations with
the Parliament and Civil Society, who had been closely following the
committee’s work and reporting back to the government on its progress.
At first
glance, the decision seems senseless and inflammatory, particularly given that
Choubani had been specifically reassuring the legislative committee that the
secretariat general was not preparing a competing draft bill. This move set off
a firestorm within the House of Representatives as well as within the Justice
and Development Party (JDP), which heads the ruling coalition, leading to
Choubani’s boycott of the cabinet.
Abdellah Bouanou, the head of the JDP faction within the House of
Representatives, announced that the government initiative had come as a
surprise. Meanwhile, parliamentarian Abdelaaziz Aftati, who represents the
anti-palace wing of the Islamists in the House of Representatives, demanded
that the government withdraw its draft bill, as it was insulting to the
legislative body. It was eventually
revealed that the speaker of the House of Representatives, a member of the
Istiqlal party, had asked the legislative committee to stop its work on the
proposal only a few days before the government approved the general
secretariat's bill, further dispelling any illusions about the separation of
powers.
In an
even stranger twist, the parliamentary investigative committees—whose structure
is the topic of the opposing legislations—are under the parliament’s
jurisdiction, as is evident by their name. So how can the government, in the
form of the secretariat general, legislate in place of parliament? These
investigative committees, which were established in Article 67 of the new
constitution, are one of the basic mechanisms that help the parliament maintain
a semblance of balance against the executive branch, primarily by granting it
the ability to serve as a watchdog over the management of public institutions
and state resources while helping combat the corruption rampant in government
contracting.
Taking
into consideration the facts that Choubani and the JDP are staunchly opposed to
royal control over the legislative process, they have tried consistently to
protect the legislative powers of the House of Representatives, and the JDP has
a relative plurality in parliament, it seems
likely that the secretary general of the government—and by extension the highly
influential makhzen—is seeking to marginalize parliament even further. Of the
20 regulatory laws required by the new constitution, as of the beginning of
July 2013 only two of them had been passed under the Benkirane government
despite its year and a half in power. Ahmed Zaidi, the head of the socialist
faction in the House of Representatives, asserts that this is not the first
time the executive branch has intruded upon the parliament’s turf: it
previously prevented discussion of a law proposed by the socialist wing in
parliament, claiming that the government (particularly the secretariat general)
was already creating a bill on the same topic.
All of
the above could mean that the current legislative term—in which some Islamists
and socialists are playing a pivotal role in pushing forward a democratic
interpretation of the constitution—will end without the bulk of the regulatory
laws on the agenda being passed or even initiated. This, in turn, implies
either that the palace, acting through the government’s secretariat general,
will impose its own interpretation of the constitution for most of the 20
regulatory laws, or else that some of these laws will be completely neglected
by the Benkirane government. Both of these outcomes work in the executive
branch’s favor. The end result for each scenario is that despite reforms,
legislative institutions will have little credibility with the public regarding
their ability to face the overwhelming power of the executive branch, which is
largely controlled by the conservative makhzen.
This article was translated from the Arabic. It is reprinted with permission from Sada and can be accessed online at: http://carnegieendowment.org/sada/2013/08/08/constitutionally-imbalanced/ghs4
Maâti Monjib is a Moroccan
political analyst and historian. He is the editor of Islamists versus
Secularists in Morocco (2009) and a regular contributor to Sada.