Mohamed Manfalouti – HIBAPRESS
With the end of the Eid al-Fitr holiday, students returned, and with them, employees and all Moroccans returned to their normal lives, which are divided between study, work, and daily life, and with them, the new extra hour usually accompanies their way of life again after they lived “bright” days with Greenwich Mean Time.
Since Tuesday morning, public and private school students have found themselves face to face with the government's decision to add 60 minutes to Greenwich Mean Time adopted in Morocco, a step that reopened the discussion among societal circles that found this decision unfair and a heavy burden that weighed heavily on them and their young children, who were leaving their beds crying, complaining, expressing dissatisfaction, and shunning school desks.
Most Moroccans are demanding and appealing for their time to be consistent with and adhere to Greenwich Mean Time, in the spirit of the famous saying "Returning to the origin is an origin and virtue," especially since the original time of Morocco, which corresponds to the geographical nature according to the Greenwich primary meridian, is a time according to the opinions of writers, readers, thinkers, and interested parties, an important time in which one finds comfort and reassurance.
It is the extra hour that has returned again to leave behind several reactions and constraints as well. Even students and young children were not spared its repercussions, and they hope that their demands and appeals will be met, and that such arbitrary decisions that have directly affected economic, social, and psychological stability will be reversed.
A wide controversy accompanied the decision of the extra hour, which made many citizens launch an electronic signature initiative on a petition to return to the "natural time," demanding a review of the decision and a return to Greenwich Mean Time, which reflects the high level of demand to drop this hour.
It is a petition that reflects the spirit of the constitution as a mechanism of participatory democracy, enabling citizens and civil society organizations to participate in the production and improvement of public decisions and policies, and an effective tool for transferring their public problems to the public authorities, and also as a means to enhance transparency and governance of public action within the framework of collective responsibility.
Legal experts believe that to activate these constitutional provisions related to petitions, the organizational laws governing this mechanism and its implementing decrees have been issued, whether related to the right to submit petitions at the national, regional, or territorial level, as the organizational law No. 44.14, as amended by the organizational law No. 70.21, (defined) the definition of the petition, the authorities concerned with it, and the conditions for its submission, and referred to Decree No. 2.16.773 regarding the determination of the composition of the petitions committee, its specializations, and its operating procedures, which undertakes the tasks of verifying the fulfillment of the petitions addressed to the head of government of the conditions stipulated in the aforementioned organizational law.
