AMMAN â?? The Lower House speaker on Tuesday chided more than 40 deputies for not attending Monday’s Lower House session and published their names in the local Arabic press yesterday.
During Monday’s session, Abdul Hadi Majali criticised the absentees and decided to take the unprecedented action of publishing their names in the papers.
The move was in accordance with House bylaws, which stipulate that deputies who fail to attend House sessions without a written excuse will have their names published in the daily press.
…A total of 56 deputies attended Monday’s session.
…25 out of the 41 absent deputies left the House after the 15-minute break given by Majali.
The House speaker had warned deputies against absenting themselves from the House session last Wednesday and again on Sunday, and threatened to take â??proper measuresâ? against those who were absent without an excuse. [source]
I thought this was pretty funny actually. I’ve never seen government accountability in Jordan, especially an attempt at self-regulated accountability. Quite the rarity. I wonder where they get the “written excuses”? Their mommies?
I guess there’s a first time for everything.
Hopefully it will be the last time names will need to be published.
Actually, there’s really no point to publishing the names other than the humiliation it causes. What they should do is publish the phone numbers of the duputies homes or offices so people can call them.
Your tax JDs at work people.
loooooool I love Jordan 🙂
I don’t think it’s to humiliate them, I think it’s to let people know so that they can judge in the future whether this person is gonna be a good active parliament member or not.
Accountability in Jordan? Well parliament in Jordan has never been in the key decision making spot so I would say we still have a long time before we see real accountability taking place.
Hamzeh, come on man, the tactic was purely for humilation purpose. Otherwise they would’ve just released the information to the press without the names, only the number of those absent.
No, but releasing the number to the press without the names defeats the whole purpose of having the people know that the deputy they voted for didn’t show up.
I don’t think it’s humiliation as much as it’s like the parliament speaker telling those who didn’t show up “ra7 afda7kom”, and he should because people need to know this stuff about the people they voted for.
If any of those deputies feels humiliated because of this, then it’s not because the parliament speaker put their name in the newspaper, it’s because they humiliated themselves.
Humiliating someone is wrong, you don’t think he did something wrong by publishing their names in the newspaper, do you? Humiliating oneself, now that’s just something out of everybody else’s hands and whoever does it to himself should learn to live with it or not do it again, right?
Hamzeh, â??ra7 afda7komâ? loool yes exactly! and thats a humiliation tactic. In toronto a political journalist on tv will sometimes go to city hall to see if council members are there and he hunts them down on tv. its accountability through humiliation. the purpose is to make them feel humiliated and shamed in order to go back to work!
and yes they humiliated themselves by not showing up, but either way, the tactic itself to print the names is one that had humiliation in mind. otherwise they wouldn’t have done it.
personally, i liked it.
So I guess we’re saying the same thing. It’s just that if I wanted to report this story Nas (which you did :D), I wouldn’t choose that title. I mean come on it’s like you’re rubbing it in their faces lol
Hamzeh, you have to make stories sound interesting 😀