During the Eid-Al-Fitr day, a group composed of legal representatives of ten Moroccan women’s rights associations filed a complaint against Morocco’s Prime Minister Abdellilah Benkirane.
As a matter of fact, the ten associations in question have decided to sue Benkirane before court on the sidelines of his recent speech before members of the Moroccan Parliament on last June 17, among which he stated that Moroccan women used to be “a brilliant chandelier illuminating their homes” and “that houses lost their light when women/mothers went out of them.”
As relayed by Telquel, among the most notable associations that filed the aforementioned complaint against the head of the government, the one finds the Democratic Association of Moroccan Women (ADFM), Spring Dignity (l’Association du printemps de la dignité), Ennakhil Association, Hands solidarity (l’Association Mains solidaires), and the Moroccan Association for the protection of women’s rights.
The 10 associations in question are represented by the lawyer Abderrahim Jamai who said that Benkirane’s statement before the Parliament infringed Moroccan women’s dignity and are discriminatory. The lawyer added that the associations have resorted to an article provided by the Moroccan law to legally sue the head of government.
In this view, Jamai said the following: “We are suing the head of government in accordance with Article 265 of Morocco’s criminal procedure, which states that the one can sue a king’s counselor or a member of the government if that person commits an illegal act,” relays Telquel.
The lawyer even went further to say that Benkirane “should normally resign,” in order not to put pressure on the justice body, so that the latter does an independent work.
Jamai closed his statement saying that this is the first time in the history of Morocco that an entity fills a complaint in court against the head of the government. “It is the first of its kind in the history of Morocco that someone sues a Moroccan head of government before a national court,” he said.
It is worth reminding that though Benkirane’s statement on women were highly mediatized, to the point The New York times, The Washington post and countless western media outlets shared stories about his speech, only around 100 Moroccan women took to the streets when some women rights associations organized a demonstration against his speech in front of the Moroccan parliament in Morocco’s capital, Rabat.
The Moroccan Times.
