His Majesty King Abdullah II will inaugurate the works of the 19th Parliament's 'non-ordinary' session of the National Assembly by delivering the Speech from the Throne Thursday at noon.

A Royal Decree was issued a week ago, by calling the National Assembly to meet in an non-ordinary session starting from Dec. 10.

The work of the session will start before the end of 2020, amid precautionary and preventive measures imposed by the government to tackle the pandemic, most notably the limitation of attending the opening to members of the Senate, the House of Representatives and the government.

After His Majesty delivers his throne speech, the Senate and the House of Representatives will separately raise their response to the speech within two weeks of the start of the session.

The Senate session, chaired by President of the Senate Faisal Al-Fayez, will begin with the recitation of the Royal Decree, which includes calling the National Assembly to convene in an extraordinary session starting Thursday, Dec. 10, followed by the election of the two vice-presidents for the council, assistants, and a committee to respond to the throne speech. The decisions will be submitted to His Majesty within 14 days of delivering the speech.

The members of the Council shall also elect, at the beginning of each ordinary or extraordinary session, the members of its 15 permanent committees.

The Lower Parliament will then recite names of all MPs who won in the elections, with each member swearing the constitutional oath before the parliament in accordance with the provisions of Article 80 of the Constitution and Article Four of the Parliament’s rules of procedure.

The representatives will begin their work by electing their president, as the parliament may not conduct any discussion or issue any decision without electing a president, according to Article 5 of the rules of procedure.

A total of 17 deputies will not be present due to COVID-19 infections.

The absentees are:

Odeh Al-Nawaysheh, Mahmoud Al-Farajat, Yassar Al-Khasawneh, Hadya Al-Sarhan, Yanal Freihat, Ahmed Al-Qatawneh, Mohammad Abu Sa'ilik, Adnan Mushawwaqa, Haitham Zayadin, Majdi Yaqoub, Omar Al-Naber, Ahmed Al-Khalaileh, and Salih Aboutayeh.