Oman (Union)
Polling stations in Jordan closed yesterday, after voting ended in the parliamentary elections, and the results were counted, with a turnout of 32 percent, with 1.6 million voters casting their ballots out of 5.1 million registered voters eligible to vote, according to the Independent Election Commission.
The elections were held on the basis of a new law passed in January 2022, which increased the number of seats in the House of Representatives from 130 to 138, women’s seats from 15 to 18, and lowered the minimum age of candidates from 30 to 25 years.
The Chairman of the Board of Commissioners of the Independent Election Commission, Musa Maaytah, said during a press conference: “What is very important in these elections is that for the first time there are lists of political parties,” noting that “the voting rate is around the general average in recent years.”
“Our country always moves steadily through hurricanes. This is not the first time that constitutional entitlements have been held on time,” Prime Minister Bisher Al-Khasawneh told reporters after casting his vote, while “we live in a volatile region.”
The official results of the elections will be announced within 48 hours, according to the Independent Election Commission. The elections were held for the first time under a new electoral law that increased the number of seats in the House of Representatives from 130 to 138, and allocated 41 of them to parties, in an attempt to give a boost to political activity. Thirty-six parties competed for the party seats, most of which were moderate and close to the government’s orientations.
The candidates include representatives of major Jordanian clans, independents, leftists, retired military personnel, and a large number of businessmen.
It is not surprising that youth are the theme of the parliamentary elections in Jordan, as they constitute a percentage that exceeds the sixty percent barrier of the Kingdom’s population, which made their representation within the legislative and decision-making circles an inevitable matter.
The presence of young people is not limited to those eligible to vote, but also extends to candidates, especially after the new election law lowered the candidacy age, thus increasing the percentage of young candidates in the current elections to more than 14 percent compared to less than 10 percent in the last parliamentary elections in 2020. Women also received greater attention in the system of political and electoral updates, after the law allocated 18 seats for them under the quota system, and this was positively reflected in the percentage of female candidates to reach 24 percent compared to 21 percent in the last elections.
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