The Sub-Committee of Elections, emanating from the Royal Committee to Modernise the Political System, approved a number of articles of the draft election law, according to the committee’s rapporteur, Amer Bani Amer.
Bani Amer told the Jordan News Agency (Petra) that the committee agreed, in its meeting chaired by Khaled Bakkar, to increase the number of parliament seats to 150, including 50 seats will be allocated to the national list, which will be limited to parties only.
Bani Amer added that the committee set a threshold for party lists of 3 percent, so that the outputs of the national list that was implemented during the 2013 elections, when most lists won only one seat, would not be repeated.
He pointed out that the list will represent candidates from at least 6 governorates and not from one governorate, in order to enhance partisan work between people of the governorates and between parties, explaining that the goal is to translate the directives of His Majesty King Abdullah and the aspirations of the Jordanian people for a partisan parliament and a parliamentary government.
Bani Amer added that the Election Committee agreed to maintain the proportion of representation of electoral districts and not the number of seats, pointing out that it is possible that the seats of some electoral districts may decrease, but it will maintain the percentage of representation in the upcoming parliamentary elections, while the total number of electoral districts in the Kingdom will remain as is, which is 23 electoral districts.
He stressed that the minimum representation will be maintained for all the quotas in force, which are “women, Christians, Circassians, Chechens and Bedouins.”
Source: Jordan News Agency