AMMAN — A majority of Lower House
members on Monday voted for keeping the selection of Amman mayor through
appointment, by the Cabinet, against voices calling for the election of the
official.
اضافة اعلان
The debate came as the chamber was
discussing the Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) draft law after a joint
committee made some changes to the version sent by the government.
the election of the mayor has been a demand by the opposition, especially
Islamists, who have influence in the capital.
Islamist MP and veteran jurist,
Saleh Al-Armouti, insisted the article providing for the appointment of GAM
chief is not constitutional. In remarks to
Jordan News after the session, he
explained that the provision clashes with the principle of equality among
Jordanians in the Constitution, when all mayors are elected while the residents
of Amman do not have the right to elect their mayor.
Proponents of this opinion insisted
that Amman is a special case and there is no need to change a decades-old norm. Deputy Prime Minister Tawfiq Krishan said that since the inception of the
state, it has been a norm that the Mayor of Amman is appointed, not elected.
MP Ali
Al-Tarawneh, head of the joint committee (legal and administrative) that
studied and approved the bill, pointed that “the joint committee made a
thorough study and went for extensive
discussions with all stakeholders over the draft law, to make sure the public
interest is well served.” Tarawneh added that “Amman is a very large city and
contains 42 of the Jordan’s population, so that it needs a special type of
service.”
Other lawmakers tried to lower the
percentage of the GAM Council members appointed by the Cabinet from a third to
25 percent, but the suggestion was also voted down.
Many lawmakers also criticized the
sixth article of the bill which indicated a provision that forbids candidates
from being related, at the organizational level, to any non-Jordanian party. On
that the Minister of Political and Parliamentary Affairs Musa Al- Maaytah commented that the article that has been in the law since
the beginning, and “we (the ministry) do not have a statistic about the number
of Jordanian people belonging to non-Jordanian parties. The agency concerned
with this matter is the Independent Election Commission.”
The lawmakers also voted to keep the
article as is.
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