RCMPS, House legal committee follow up on draft laws for elections, political parties

AMMAN — Members of the Royal Committee to Modernise the Political System (RCMPS) on Tuesday had “fruitful” discussions with the Lower House Legal Committee over the draft laws for elections and political parties, according to president of the RCMPS’ Political Parties’ Committee Adnan Sawair 

“We met with legal committee members to discuss our recommendations and the reasons we made some decisions regarding the youth participation,” Sawair told The Jordan Times.

The draft laws were the result of the RCMPS’ recommendations that were forwarded to the government late last year. 

The Cabinet endorsed the recommendations and sent them to Parliament to be debated and upheld.

The RCMP’s member said one of the main goals for the committee was to ensure that “no one should be harassed, including university students if they decided to join a political party”.

In commenting on the recent formation of political parties by veteran politicians, Sawair said the step “is too early”.

“We noticed that several individuals are teaming up to form political parties, but if they do it now they would be forming the political body based on the old law,” Sawair said.

One of the conditions is to hold a general meeting one month after forming the political party, Sawair said.

But when the new law is passed, he added, the newly established political party will be obliged to hold another meeting and to adopt certain measures to ensure that they are operating in accordance with the new law.

 Chairman of the Royal Committee’s elections committee Khaled Bakkar said that a specific period was identified in the party and election laws, stipulating that anyone who wishes to run for elections through the party list shall be in party member for six months.

Stressing that the bill focused on moving from individual parliamentary work to collective action, he said that the number of electoral districts has been reduced.

The new bill removed caps on the number of seats allocated for Circassians and Chechens, in addition to increasing the number of seats for women, he added.