Jordan to Hold New Parliamentary Elections
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Around 7 months after dissolving the Lower House of Parliament, King Abdullah of Jordan has issued a decree on Tuesday to hold parliamentary elections according to the provisions of law.
“Designated international organisations as well as the National Centre for Human Rights and concerned local NGOs will be allowed to “witness” the forthcoming parliamentary elections slated before year-end, according to the government.The Cabinet also introduced a new distribution of constituencies by dividing main districts within governorates into sub-districts.
According to the new law, the number of Lower House seats has been increased from 110 to 120, encompassing 108 smaller electoral districts, plus 12 seats reserved for the women’s quota, up from six.”-The Jordan Times
The earlier decision of dissolving the parliament has caused lots of controversy, and resulted in downgrading Jordan in the Freedom House’s global report from being a partly free country, to a not free one. The Freedom House’s report was issued regardless of the statistics which showed that a percentage of 85% of Jordanians were in favor of the decision, which was mainly due to the incompetency of the former parliament.
Hopes now are that Jordanians who agreed with the decision of dissolving the parliament earlier on, will make a better choice this time voting for those who will make the aspired positive changes in the country once in position of power.
