Amman: Prime Minister Bisher Khasawneh said that Jordan has made significant progress in every area under the rule of His Majesty King Abdullah II.
During his hosting in Al-Mamlaka TV channel’s open studio, he added, “I extend from His Majesty King Abdullah II and Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah my warmest and most sincere congratulations on the occasion of the Silver Jubilee, this national occasion dear to every Jordanian man and woman, praying to God Almighty to continue the process of continuous construction, which we have termed the “great transition” that took place during the prosperous era of His Majesty the King, indicating that 25 years after we entered the bicentennial and coinciding with the anniversary of His Majesty’s assumption of his constitutional powers the blanket program of modernization was launched.
The Prime Minister noted that the first step of the comprehensive modernization project is the coming into effect of the Royal Decree to hold parliamentary elections on September 10 base
d on the new laws governing parties and elections as well as the constitutional amendments suggested by the Royal Committee for the Modernization of the Political System, which included members of all political spectrums in Jordan as well as many of our bright young people and women, on whose empowerment and integration into politics His Majesty the King depends.
Additionally, he emphasized that the framework governing the law on political parties and elections encompasses the ways in which public work is organized within partisan programmatic frameworks primarily based on Jordanian national economic, social, and political priorities. These include fostering party organization and making sure that our young people, of whom His Majesty the King and His Highness the Crown Prince are always proud, as well as Jordanian women, who are vital collaborators in the process of constructing society and development, are integrated into this political path capable of influencing social and economic decisions.
He made no
te of the fact that the reform tracks are all interconnected and last for ten years. The political track starts with a first stop that results in a party list consisting of forty-one seats. Four years later, the number of party seats increases to fifty percent, and then to seventy percent, reaching a point where parties are able to form a majority in parliament. At this point, His Majesty the King may, in accordance with his constitutional powers, deem it appropriate to select the majority party or coalition of majority parties to form a partisan government.
Simultaneously, His Majesty the King unveiled the Economic Modernization Vision, which aims to create one million job opportunities by the end of the ten years and double economic growth rates to reach 5.5 percent, Khasawneh said, adding that these goals would address a major issue that we face and suffer from, namely unemployment, which we can only resolve by accomplishing these goals.
He mentioned that the government had started these tracks’ executiv
e programs, with the first one aimed at economic modernization reaching many of its objectives. He also mentioned that we had seen very encouraging results in terms of reaching the program’s targeted growth rates and that we had reduced unemployment from 24.1 percent to 21.4 percent in just two years.
He pointed out that if we review in the language of numbers since His Majesty the King assumed his constitutional powers from 1999 until 2022, the Jordanian GDP was about six billion Jordanian dinars, while today it reaches the limits of 35-36 billion Jordanian dinars, and the income derived from the industrial sector was in 1999 about one billion and 300 million Jordanian dinars and now seven billion and 330 million Jordanian dinars.
He also mentioned the tourism industry, whose earnings in 1999 were estimated to be between one billion and 300 million Jordanian dinars; as of now, they are estimated to be around 5.2 billion. In addition, the number of government and private institutions as well as military cul
ture schools has increased.
Additionally, he brought up the number of businesses operating in the fields of entrepreneurship, communications, and information technology, which stood at roughly 300 in 1999 but has since grown to over 3500.
The interruption of Egyptian gas supply, the Corona pandemic, which affected the entire world and caused a slowdown in the global economy, the Ukrainian-Russian crisis and its inflationary effectiveness we were able to contain thanks to His Majesty’s international standing and the ongoing brutal war and crimes against our people that are currently taking place in the Gaza Strip as well as the extremely dangerous escalation that aims to alter the West Bank all of which His Majesty the King bears primary responsibility for protecting Islamic and Christian holy sites and the Al-Aqsa Mosque based on the Hashemite Custodianship.
The younger generation, which makes up over 75 percent of Jordan’s population, is a youthful society, according to Khasawneh, who also noted that only
about 35 percent of eligible voters participated in the previous elections. This low number is insufficient to represent the aspirations of our youth, and casting a ballot is essentially a bet on the youth’s participation in the elections.
Source: Jordan News Agency