By Hani Hazaimeh

AMMAN – The new electoral system will end individual competition for parliamentary elections as the candidates will be able to join the race as part of a list at the governorate or the Kingdom level, members of the National Dialogue Committee said on Wednesday.

The committee also agreed that the Kingdom list must include representatives from all governorates in order to ensure that all seats are distributed equally across all governorates and not concentrated in smaller ones.

“We delegated the chairman of the committee to decide on the number of the seats that will be allocated for the list at the Kingdom level provided that it should not be less than 12 seats,” Mohammad Abu Rumman told The Jordan Times yesterday, expecting the number to be 15 (for the 12 governorates and three badia districts).

Under the proposed elections law, the so-called virtual districts will disappear, according to Abu Rumman. However, he said, Amman, Zarqa and Irbid will be divided to geographically identified sub-districts ranging between two to three in each due to the density of population in these three governorates.

Abu Rumman explained that with regards to the governorate list, the number of votes per each voter will be limited to the number of seats allocated for the governorate.

The panel members also endorsed the proposed draft of the political parties law. The two pieces of legislation are seen as the centre of the political reform process.

An independent panel will oversee the elections instead of the interior ministry, which was assisted by judicial officials. read more