The National Assembly, formerly known as the Chamber of Deputies, is the

unicameral Unicameralism (from ''uni''- "one" + Latin ''camera'' "chamber") is a type of legislature, which consists of one house or assembly, that legislates and votes as one. Unicameral legislatures exist when there is no widely perceived need for multi ...

legislative branch A legislature is an assembly with the authority to make laws for a political entity such as a country or city. They are often contrasted with the executive and judicial powers of government. Laws enacted by legislatures are usually known ...

of the government of

Djibouti Djibouti, ar, جيبوتي ', french: link=no, Djibouti, so, Jabuuti officially the Republic of Djibouti, is a country in the Horn of Africa, bordered by Somalia to the south, Ethiopia to the southwest, Eritrea in the north, and the Red ...

Overview

It consists of 65 members – 30 Somali (21 Issa) and 30 Afar – elected to serve five-year terms in multi-seat (4 to 37 each) constituencies. The first free multi-party parliamentary election since independence (1977) was held in 2003, with the ruling coalition, led by the

People's Rally for Progress The People's Rally for Progress ( ar, التجمع الشعبي من أجل التقدم; french: Rassemblement populaire pour le Progrès, RPP) is a political party in Djibouti. It has dominated politics in the country since 1979, initially under ...

(RPP), receiving 62.7% of the vote.

Idriss Arnaoud Ali Idriss Arnaoud Ali (25 December 1945 – 12 February 2015) was a Djiboutian politician who was President of the National Assembly of Djibouti from 2003 to 2015. He was also the Secretary-General of the People's Rally for Progress (RPP) from 200 ...

was President of the National Assembly from 2003 until his death in 2015. He was succeeded by

Mohamed Ali Houmed Mohamed Ali Houmed (born 1973) is a Djiboutian politician who was president of the National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicame ...

. For its entire existence, the National Assembly has been dominated by the Popular Rally for Progress, which is presently the senior partner in the Union for a Presidential Majority coalition. From 1981 to 1992, the RPP was the sole legal party. Even after opposition parties were legalized in 1992, the RPP won every seat in the legislature. From 1997 onward, it fought elections as part of a coalition, known since 2003 as the UMP, which continued to sweep every seat. Opposition parties did not manage to enter the legislature until 2013. In the

2018 Djiboutian parliamentary election Parliamentary elections were held in Djibouti on 23 February 2018. The election was boycotted by the main opposition parties, including some of the parties in the Union for National Salvation coalition, which had won 10 seats in the previous elect ...

, which was boycotted by the main opposition parties, the Union for the Presidential Majority won a heavy majority. The Djiboutian political system concentrates most power in the president's hands, and there is little opposition to executive decisions. As of 2018, a quota mandates that at least 25% of the legislators be women.

Presidents

Building

The building of the national assembly was built and partially financed by the government of Iran and completed on November 23, 2014. The debt for this project has still not been paid to this date. Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani attended a ceremony to inaugurate this new building and to hand it over.

References

External links

* Politics of Djibouti

1977 establishments in Djibouti {{poli-stub