EU Elections Observation Mission announces final report

The European Union Elections Observation Mission (EU EOM) has announced its final report on the January 23rd Parliamentary Elections which included recommendations to develop the electoral process in the future.Chief Observer David Martin reinforced the mission’s initial positive assessment of the polls, although the overall assessment of the impartiality and transparent image of the polls was negatively affected by delays in the tabulation of national constituency results.In a press conference organized by the Mission, Martin presented a briefing and presented recommendations pertaining to the electoral process and the elections law, based on the mission’s observations.The recommendations included giving consideration to undertake periodic boundary delimitation and starting a national and inclusive dialogue among Jordanians to decide on the electoral system that expresses the aspirations and wishes of the people for a future government. “The current electoral system of ‘single non-transferable vote’ does not reinforce political parties while individual candidates largely benefited from it,” Martin said.He added that if the current mixed electoral system is retained, consideration could be given to the national lists to be open only for political parties in order to reinforce the role of political parties in the parliament.“Consideration could be given to remove provisions for concurrent regulatory power of the Independent Elections Commission and the Council of Ministers in both the Elections Law and IEC Law to guarantee effective independence and unfettered regulatory power of the Independent Elections Commission,” the EU observer said.As for elections campaigns media regulations, Martin said that they could be improved by extending to private media the obligation for an equitable and neutral treatment of candidates, by including specific violations and sanctions for the election campaign period and a provision for allocation of free airtime to candidates on the public broadcast media, particularly for candidates running at national level.The European Union Elections Observation Mission was invited by the Independent Elections Commission to observe the Jordanian parliamentary elections on January 23, 2013. Over 80 observers from all European Union Member States, Norway and Switzerland took part in the mission. The mission is independent from any EU institutions or Member States and is obliged to remain nueteral and adhere to the Declaration of Principles for International Election Observation and the Code of Conduct as well as the laws of the Kingdom