HIBAPRESS – Mohammed El Yandozi
A session of the Laroui Communal Council, affiliated with the Nador province, witnessed a loud and sharp debate on Wednesday, resulting in widespread discontent among members and those interested in local affairs.
This heated controversy centered around the allocation of a total financial support of 20 million centimes to a specific online news website. This decision was considered by a number of actors concerned about the city as a blatant provocation of public funds, given the stalled development priorities.
In detail, this debate erupted when a council member raised fundamental questions about the criteria and the economic and developmental feasibility behind allocating this huge sum. The councilor questioned with condemnation: "What has this news website offered to the city of Laroui to deserve such generous support?", especially since the mentioned platform has never provided any media coverage of the council's sessions and activities since the election of the new bureau.
The tension inside the meeting hall intensified after the revelation of how these financial credits were disbursed, as the amount of 20 million centimes was distributed in annual installments of five million centimes per year. This distribution provoked the anger of the opposition and some councilors who considered that this formula conceals unjustified sponsorship of a specific platform over other serious and active platforms in the region.
The echo of this controversy did not remain within the walls of the meeting hall but directly moved to the local street and social media, where citizens and associations expressed their overwhelming dissatisfaction with directing community funds towards suspicious preferences, at a time when the neighborhoods of Laroui suffer from a huge shortage of infrastructure, vital facilities, and social initiatives that deserve priority support.
In the face of these disturbing developments, human rights and political voices in the city of Laroui have risen, demanding urgent intervention from the responsible and supervisory authorities, topped by the Ministry of Interior and the governor of Nador province, to audit these agreements and open a thorough investigation into the circumstances and details of allocating this generous grant to a news website lacking the required productivity and professionalism in serving the causes of the residents.
In conclusion, it appears that this incident will cast a heavy shadow on the remaining stages of the current electoral term of the Laroui Communal Council, which necessitates the management bureau to demonstrate transparency and responsibility, and to definitively break with the policy of media rent that only contributes to deepening the crisis of trust between the citizen and their elected institutions.
