Jordanian Government

Jordan is a Constitutional Monarchy. This means that it is run by both a king and a Parliament. The Parliament has as much power as the king allows it to have. He can dissolve the Parliament or suspend its authority at any time.

Jordan's Parliament is broken into two houses.

• A senate called the "House of Notables" or Majlis al-Ayan which has 55 senators nominated by the king from designated categories of public figures. They each serve four-year terms.
• A House of representitives called the "Chamber of Deputies" or the Majlis Majlis al-Nuwaab. Jordan is broken into tribes and each tribe elects a representative to Parliament.

The problems that this 'Representative democracy" causes are often refereed to as "tribal mentality". Predominately it has to do with nepotism and the fact that the tribes often see women as too emotional to be good leaders. This is quite sad to the more liberal Jordanians because most of Jordan's voters are women.(People who are tied to the military are not allowed to vote so that the army remains neutral.)

Since all of the seats in Parliament were being filled by men, the present king, King Abduallah, put in a quota system. 6 seats MUST be held by women.

The fulfillment of these seats brings quite a debate among Jordanians. Some say that none of the women sitting in the Parliament were actually elected, while some say that there are a few. What does seem to be a consensus in opinion is that many of the men in Parliament are illiterate. They truly can not read or write, while all the women are active in NGOs and have Ph.D's.

Bedouins, being very patriarchal and therefore against women in the government, then raised the number of seats in Parliament from 110 to 116.

So King Abduallah raised the quota from 6 to 12.