Bahrain's state news agency, BNA, reported on Sunday that the Consultative Council, the National Assembly’s upper house, passed the draft bill, according to which all leaders and members of political associations dissolved by the judicial system are prohibited from standing for elections.
The report added that the bill had been approved against these people "due to their serious violations of the constitution and laws of the kingdom."
The bill has already secured its approval from the House of Representatives, the lower house of the National Assembly, but still needs to be signed by Bahrain's King Hamad
...King of Bahrain (since 14 February 2002), having previously been its emir (from 6 March 1999). He is a Sunni, while the rest of Bahrain is predominantly Shiite...
bin Isa Al Khalifah to become law.
On July 17, 2016, the Bahraini High Administrative Court ordered the dissolution of the country’s main Iranian catspaw, the al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, and the seizure of its funds, accusing it of helping to foster violence and terrorism in Western-allied Bahrain, where the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet is stationed.
The court ruling drew criticism from the United Nations
...boodling on the grand scale...
, with then Secretary General
the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon describing the dissolution as "the latest in a series of restrictions of the rights to peaceful assembly, freedom of association, and freedom of expression in Bahrain." al-Wefaq’s leader Sheikh Ali Salman, a senior Bahraini Shia holy man, has also been in prison on a nine-year jail sentence since late 2014.