Parliamentary brawl in Jordan: Can voters’ faith be restored?
Increasingly, Jordanians say they think little of Parliament, if they think of it at all.
Once revered as the “people’s house,” Parliament is now being dismissed by some as a “house of embarrassment.”
A reminder why was a mass brawl last week during a debate over constitutional amendments that featured punches, body slams, headlocks, and a house speaker ordering lawmakers to “shut up!” It gave another black eye to an institution seen as less representative, or relevant, than in the past.
Two decades of gerrymandering and electoral engineering by governments eager to suppress dissent have filled the legislature with MPs hand-picked for loyalty but lacking ideology or policies.
“Our Parliament is a sideshow; we don’t hear from them when it matters, and when we do hear from them, we wished we hadn’t,” says Bassam, a former military officer who
