Amman — After Tuesday’s dramatic encounter at the
Lower House that saw lawmakers
trading blows and verbal abuse over differences regarding constitutional
amendments, legal scholars and MPs alike found themselves engaged in a
conversation over how to regulate the conduct of parliamentarians.
اضافة اعلان
There are 22 amendments that will be debated by the
Lower House, include the potential set-up of a National Security Council,
expanding appointing powers by His Majesty
King Abdullah.
Another debated amendment pertains to Article 6a of
the Constitution, the first sentence of which reads “Jordanians shall be equal
before the law.”
The proposed change would see the word “urdunioon”
(“Jordanians” in Arabic, which is a grammatically masculine noun but also used
to refer to all Jordanians regardless of gender) with the words “urdunioon” and
“urduniaat” (the feminine plural of
Jordanians).
These are arguably the most notable and
controversial of the amendments.
MP
Asma Rawahneh told
Jordan News about her
initial feelings when the fighting first broke out during the session on
Tuesday.
“I did not feel intimidated to be honest, but I felt
uneasy and disturbed. I could not ignore the fact that, as parliamentarians, we
represent the people of this nation and hence we have a duty to convey our
thoughts in an honorable, civil manner,” she said.
To prevent similar scenarios from occurring in the
future, Rawahneh said that an emphasis on dialogue and conversation is crucial.
“We need to reeducate ourselves collectively on the true meaning of democracy.
The best interpretation of democracy reminds us that even if two of disagree
strongly on something, both will know that at the end of the day they are
colleagues who must be treated with mutual respect and dignity,” she said.
Professor of Constitutional Law at the
University of Jordan Laith Nasrawin told
Jordan News that proceedings in the Lower
House are regulated through bylaws. “I am not calling for an independent
investigatory committee to be established as a result of the fighting incident
on Tuesday,” he said. “I am just calling for the appropriate actors to revise
the bylaws for members of parliament so that it would include certain
provisions for regulating the process and the hearings, so that proper
penalties are imposed on MPs who commit breaches,” he added.
“If you look at the sanctions right now that address
the conduct of MPs, they’re quite basic. The penalties include freezing of the
membership or dismissing MPs from parliamentary sessions. But we need to have
some penalties in between these two existing ones. We should keep in mind that
MPs are bound to follow a code of conduct,” Nasrawin said.
He continued by pointing out that according to the
Jordanian parliamentary code of conduct of 2015, a committee is responsible for
enforcing the code of conduct and address these kinds of issues. “The problem
is that this committee has been abolished in 2019, according to the bylaw. As
of 2019, the Legal Committee now handles cases of misconduct. We need to amend
our code of conduct to reflect this bylaw change,” Nasrawin said.
He added that the reason why parliamentarians engage
in fights during official sessions and are held to a different standard than
civilians who commit violence in a non-political setting is largely due to
“parliamentary immunity.”
The amendments will first be debated on a one-by-one basis,
he added, and while the King has the power to veto the amendments if they are
approved by the legislative branch, such veto powers “have never been used in
modern history,” Nasrawin concluded.
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