In his speech at the opening session, Lower House Speaker Rachid Talbi Alami said that “one of the attributes of our parliamentary system is that, with the exception of plenary sittings, the House of Representatives pursues its work throughout the year at the level of the other organs, meaning the Board, the Standing Committees, the Thematic Working Groups, and the Exploratory Missions, as well as at the level of external relations and parliamentary diplomacy.”
He emphasized that this continuity of work allows for improved work, a more in-depth debate on the subjects subject to control, legislation or evaluation, and helps to manage parliamentary time in a more efficient and fluid manner. This is what confirms the record of the work of the House during the interval of the second legislative year under the eleventh Parliament, he said.
In terms of legislation, Talbi Alami said that the Parliamentary Standing Committees have been working on constituent bills that are essential for the country to frame a new generation of reforms, embodied in public policies, programs and interventions.
In particular, The bills in question cover social insurance, health insurance, medicines, the human resources operating in the health sector, and the central and territorial organization of the sector, he said.
“These bills serve as a framework for the major transition launched by our country in the area of social protection, universalization of medical services, and facilitation of access to them by the entire population, thus embodying the notion of the Welfare State as a Royal project that enjoys the high solicitude of His Majesty the King and requires the engagement of all social actors given its nobility and objectives.”
In addition to the concern to improve and adopt these texts, the House of Representatives is required to monitor their implementation, to ensure their positive impact on the various social strata and to monitor continuously the improvement of health and social welfare indicators and the quality of health service, he continued.
As for the control of government action and relations with other constitutional institutions and governance bodies, Talbi Alami said that the parliamentary standing committees have examined during the interval of the sessions sixteen topics, stressing that these committees have worked intensively in the field of control by examining a number of current issues that concern public opinion, in the presence of members of the government and officials of public institutions.
The Committees have examined, in more than 110 meetings, 220 topics since the beginning of the current Legislature, of which more than 60 are related to the first Session and the interval between the two sessions of the second legislative year, he said, noting that this dynamic reflects a growing tendency to control work on the part of the House, and the automatic interaction of the legislative and executive powers with the issues of citizens and the concerns of the public opinion.
While the public policy evaluation processes conducted are legitimate and democratic, with input from the parliamentary opposition and majority, and by listening to the actors of each public policy under evaluation and the groups that benefit from it, noted Talbi Alami.
The legislative and executive branches are called upon to ensure that the recommendations and conclusions agreed upon are capitalized upon to remedy the imbalances of the policies evaluated and to propose reforms so that the exercise of this parliamentary competence has an impact on society and that public spending produces the desired effect.
There is no doubt, according to him, that the assessment of the exploratory missions constitutes, in turn, a rich subject that must be taken into account with the executive power, to be concretized through practical actions.
He also called on parliamentarians to intensify the discussion of all finalized reports prepared by the thematic working groups responsible for evaluation, as well as those prepared by MPs responsible for exploratory missions, and to agree with the government on the recommendations and conclusions applicable.
Talbi Alami also praised the contribution of all groups and the parliamentary grouping to the dynamics of work noted during the interval of the sessions, especially with regard to the questions, numbering 880 covering mostly current affairs, while written questions have reached 856, in addition to 18 bills that have been presented.
“The institutions are the constitutional framework for managing disagreements and differences, dialogue and democracy being the way to solve all problems in all circumstances and conditions. Unity, which does not deny the difference, pluralism and diversity, is undoubtedly our way to meet the challenges facing our country in the context of current international transformations,” concluded Talbi Alami.
