The Minister of Justice, Abdellatif Ouahbi, made a new controversial outing. Responding to questions from the Justice and Legislation Committee in the House of Representatives this week, he criticized certain decisions of the Constitutional Court.
In its edition of Friday November 15, Assaba returns to this intervention which mainly concerned the draft organic law establishing the conditions and procedures for the exception of unconstitutionality of laws, and which the Constitutional Court rejected twice. For the minister, this text had been adopted by a council of ministers, then by the deputies, and the Constitutional Court should not have rejected it. Especially since, according to him, the prerogatives of this court do not authorize him to do so.
As also reported Assabathe council of ministers is not a debate body, but rather a decision-making body, recalled the minister. In his capacity as minister, he is not authorized to debate with the King (editor’s note: who chairs the councils of ministers), but does so with the head of government. He uses this as an illustration that often after a government council meeting, the adoption of a text is announced, as are the remarks made by ministers on this same text.
Returning to the law on the unconstitutionality of laws, the Minister of Justice indicated that the outgoing president of the Constitutional Court had twice vetoed the text, calling for it to be revised in a way that corresponds to the Constitution .
If Abdellatif Ouahbi seemed to defend the text in question, Assaba reports that the opposition considers for its part that the government made an error when presenting this organic law to the council of ministers, and that it is therefore solely responsible for its rejection by the Constitutional Court.
As a reminder, the Constitutional Court rejected this organic law at the beginning of 2023. In its argument, it explained that draft organic laws should not be submitted to Parliament for examination before their adoption by the Council of Ministers. She also explained that he had to decide on this text before its presentation to Parliament.
