Moroccan Islamist Party Seeks to Oust Defecting Lawmaker Amid Pre-Election Party Switching

Political parties are struggling to put an end to the phenomenon of political transhumance. As usual, it is on the eve of elections that this phenomenon, condemned by all political actors and even civil society, resurfaces.

In this case, the PJD is asking the President of the House of Representatives to refer the matter to the Constitutional Court in order to deprive Abdellatif Naciri of his seat as a deputy who joined the RNI party on April 2. Yet it was under the banner of the Islamist party that the defector ran in the October 2016 legislative elections in the Aïn Choq-Sidi Maarouf constituency in Casablanca.

The PJD’s request for the forfeiture finds its legal basis in the organic law of the House of Representatives in its article 90. It is on this basis that Mustapha Ibrahimi, president of the group of Islamist deputies, sent a letter on Monday, April 5 to the president Habib El Malki. In light of Article 61 of the Constitution of July 1, 2011, the applicant believes he has a chance that the defector will be dismissed from office.

Because Article 61 of the Constitution provides that "any member of either House who renounces his political affiliation under which he stood for election or the parliamentary group or group to which he belongs, shall be deprived of his mandate." But there is a nuance. The defector had resigned from the PJD in November.