Are you ashamed of our Parliament?

After the black comedy of the Parliament's vote on the public budget last week, I have to admit that I am ashamed, as a Jordanian citizen and voter, of the low professional quality of the Parliamentarian process and of course, the shallowness of the majority of its members.

The debate for the public budget started with encouraging signs in the initial phases, but then dropped to a horrendous levels of chaos. My fellow blogger Khalaf has produced an outstanding analysis of the budget which I endorse and will not replicate, but I will try to focus on the silly events of the voting.

To begin with, the government provided the draft budget to the Parliaments' Financial Committee. The Financial Committee has done a good job, or according to an internal source I talked to the real analysis of the budget was done by a veterane economic analyst consulted by the Financial Committee. The Committee, based on the analyst's views, provided the government with 23 very reasonable recommendations that should be committed by the Government before voting for the budget. two recommendations were noteworthy:

1- Reducing the amount of financial allocations for projects stipulated under the National Agenda from 150 million JDs to 60 million JDs, saving 90 millions JDs in the process.

2- Introducing a 0.05% tax on the stock market deals and profits which must go directly to the treasury.

Good enough? not in the Jordanian Parliament.

One of the members of the Parliament, Khalil Attiyah who is supposed to be representing the voters from Eastern Amman with a high rate of poverty organized a crusade to collect signatures against this recomendation. Remember that Mr Attiyah is a member of the Financial Committee.

Mr Attiyah was highly successful, collecting 82 signatures from deputies who seem to be gaining profits in the Amman stock market in less than 24 hours, to help the Government to refuse this recommendation due to deputies' pressure. Great work our deputies.

So, the pressure will remain on the family budgets of poor people in Jordan to close the deficit in the budget and not on the profits of rich capitalists.

During voting, most of the Financial Committee members voted againts the recommendations of the Committee, making it obvious that they were not conviced of them and maybe not participating at all in their design.

During the chaos generated by the withdrawal of 3 deputies who chose the easy way out, the allocated budget for the National Agenda remained to be 150 million JDs and not 60 JDs so a "transaction of 90 million JDs happened under the noses of the indifferent and ignorant deputies.

I am ashamed, and feeling disgusted by the Jordanian Parliament and I am really frustrated with the lack of accountability for such a useless political body.