A/HRC/24/36
concern to the authorities of all three main organs of the State. One interlocutor was of the
view that the concept of the National Congress was no longer needed in the country now
that the National Assembly and Senate were bodies composed of people’s representatives.
The Congress however remains a constitutional requirement. As the King is the guarantor
of the Constitution, the monarch should be able to receive people in audience and receive
information from people from all walks of life. It should be held every year as mandated by
the Constitution. For this, the organic law relating to the National Congress should be
enacted without delay;
(d)
He called for the strengthening of the role of the Human Rights Commissions
in Parliament to mainstream human rights as a cross-cutting issue and to ensure the
compliance of domestic laws with international human rights standards.
(e)
He called on all Members of Parliament, including members of opposition
parties, to participate fully in the work of Parliament and cooperate, in particular in the
work of the Commissions of the National Assembly;
(f)
Regarding the Constitutional Council, he recommended that it review not
only the laws enacted by Parliament but also the internal rules of Parliament in general and
the National Assembly in particular, to ascertain whether they were compatible with the
Constitution, international human rights standards, and the principles of rule of law,
including the principles of natural justice;
(g)
Among the urgent tasks before Parliament is the review of the new Criminal
Code with a view to ensuring its compliance with the permissible limitation to freedom of
expression under international human rights law. Parliament should safeguard the right to
freedom of expression of its own members and protect their parliamentary immunity.
31.
With regard to his recommendations on parliamentary reform, the Special
Rapporteur was encouraged by a positive response from the President of the Foreign
Relations Commission of the National Assembly and the Secretary-General of the Senate
and by a willingness to implement many of them in the next Parliament. He was given
information about the efforts being made to implement some of his recommendations and
the difficulties involved in implementing others. In regard to nearly all of them, however,
he regrets that recent developments demonstrate not an advancement towards better
protection of human rights but, on the contrary, a disturbing reversal. The passage of most
of the critical laws raised in his report had not progressed. The days following his mission
saw the dismissal of 29 opposition Members of Parliament on 5 June 2013, on the eve of
the start of the official electoral campaigning period. By this act, those Members of
Parliament were denied not only the ability to carry their messages through Parliament, but
also their salaries and parliamentary immunity from prosecution, which has created an
unhealthy and undemocratic environment for this important imminent milestone in the
political development of the nation.
32.
With this in mind, the Special Rapporteur once again calls upon the Government to
revisit the recommendations on parliamentary reform contained in his report with a view to
implementing them without further delay.
V. Follow-up to recommendations on elections
33.
The subject of the Special Rapporteur’s report to the twenty-first session of the
Human Rights Council (A/HRC/21/63) was electoral reform. While the Special
Rapporteur’s mission in May 2013 took place at an important time when the country was
on the cusp of elections for the National Assembly, the present report was finalized some
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