SIGI offers training to 3,500 youth on election monitoring

AMMAN — With one day left for the parliamentary elections, around 3,500 men and women finished a training course conducted by a local organisation to start monitoring the election from a gender-perspective.

“The trained young men and women will be distributed in various election booths in the Kingdom to monitor the entire election process on a voluntary basis,” said Solidarity Is Global Institute (SIGI) Executive Director Asma Khader.

The volunteers will focus on how the women candidates and other females who are involved in the electoral process are being treated by the public and the relevant officials, Khader told The Jordan Times.

“We want to ensure that all the procedures and regulations are being implemented from a  gender-perspective as well as the public and official response to women’s participation before and during the election process,” Khader added.

The youth, according to Khader, include around 1,200 men and women, who took part in monitoring the previous elections. 

“The old and new volunteers received their training via the Zoom application and were also informed about the code of conduct that they should abide by while monitoring the elections and were provided with the forms to be used on election day,” Khader said.

The trained volunteers will be wearing red vests and were instructed to abide by strict health restrictions, Khader stressed.

The monitoring process is part of SIGI’s Eye on Women Programme to Monitor the 2020 Elections from a Gender Perspective, which was accredited by the Independent Election Commission (IEC) as one of the monitoring supervisory bodies.

The programme also aims to empower women, emphasise the importance of equal opportunities for Jordanian women, and ensure their active participation in the political, social, economic and cultural decision-making process. 

Meanwhile, the IEC on Sunday said the number of violations committed by parliamentary candidates has risen to 836.

Last week, IEC Spokesperson Jihad Momani told The Jordan Times there were 710 violations that were mostly related to financial irregularities, or what is termed as “black money”.

The financial irregularities, according to Momani, are practised mostly "by candidates who use money to buy votes".

Meanwhile, the IEC official said the final count of the lists that were registered in preparation for the upcoming elections were 294.

The total number of registered voters now stands at 1,674, including 360 women, according to Momani. 

“We urge people to head to the polling stations and vote for the list they believe would better represent them and represent the interest of the country,” Momani said.