HIBAPRESS – Rabat
Mehdi Bensaïd, Minister of Youth, Culture, and Communication, presented additional details regarding the amendments that affected the draft law on the reorganization of the National Press Council, highlighting that the new formula seeks to establish a greater balance within the council's structure and enhance the representation of various actors in the sector.
The minister clarified that these amendments came in response to the observations of the Constitutional Court, as well as within the framework of interaction with the professional and institutional discussions that accompanied the preparation of the project. In this context, Bensaïd revealed that among the most prominent developments is the reduction of the number of council members to 17 members instead of 19, after removing two members from the category of wise publishers previously stipulated, in addition to stipulating the allocation of at least one seat for women for each professional organization that obtains more than one seat within the category of representatives of publishers, in a step aimed at strengthening the presence of women within the media governance bodies. Bensaïd also pointed to the adoption of a representative system based on the principle of proportionality in the distribution of seats, by calculating the electoral divisor based on the total representative shares of professional organizations compared to the number of allocated seats. The minister added that these amendments are not limited to the numerical and organizational aspects only, but also include other provisions aimed at improving the council's governance and ensuring greater transparency in its management, in line with the requirements of developing the press and publishing sector in Morocco. This discussion comes in the context of the meeting of the Education, Culture, and Communication Committee on Tuesday at the House of Representatives, in the presence of Mehdi Bensaïd, Minister of Youth, Culture, and Communication, in order to present draft law No. 09.26 related to the reorganization of the National Press Council, which is the meeting that formed an opportunity to present these developments before discussing them with the committee members.
