Elections in Jordan

Judging by turnout
Expect a nice election but ponder the number who fail to vote

Nov 4th 2010

JORDAN seems to be the Canada of the Middle East. Well-run compared with the neighbors, it has safe and tidy streets, good schools and steady if plodding economic growth. Its police are tough and efficient but generally pretty nice.

Jordan even runs better elections than most. The one on November 9th, for the lower house of parliament, has 763 candidates competing for 120 seats, 24 of them reserved for women and minorities. The campaign has been peaceful and festive so far, with plenty of banners and posters and catchy sloganeering. Foreign observers are expected to give the vote a clean bill of health. Its likely outcome is a solid pro-government majority sprinkled with mild dissent.

The trouble is that few Jordanians seem to care much, for good reason. For the past 20 years their rulers, first King Hussein, now his son Abdullah, have promised meaningful democratic reform. Lots of lofty-sounding changes have been decreed, such as a new election law in May, which boosted the quota for women and allotted new seats to some under-represented districts. Yet the meaningful part has been largely absent.

Even with the new districting, for instance, a vote cast in the crowded capital, Amman, carries only a quarter of the weight of one cast in the dusty provincial town of Ma’an. This is because most people in Jordan’s bigger cities are of Palestinian descent, and therefore seen as less attached to the monarchy. By contrast, natives to the east side of the Jordan river, many of whom retain strong tribal ties, dominate in the hinterlands. Tribes still supply much of the manpower for Jordan’s security forces, and in tacit reward for such patronage have historically remained staunchly loyal to the ruling Hashemite family.

In any case, Jordan’s legislature does not have much influence. The king appoints the upper house, chooses the prime minister and cabinet, and can dissolve parliaments he dislikes. He has done this twice since ascending the throne in 1999, and during those legislative hiatuses ruled by decree. Loopholes and fuzzy laws let him muzzle the press and stifle dissent, much as happens in the meaner-looking countries next door.

This is why Jordan’s only real opposition, the Islamic Action Front, tied to the global Muslim Brotherhood, is boycotting this year’s polls. Its stand marks a break from the past, when the Islamists have traded loyalty to the Hashemites for a wider margin of maneuver. The growing stridency of the front, which supports Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement, and bridles at Jordan’s 16-year-old peace treaty with Israel, has heightened tension with the Hashemites. So the question in many Jordanian minds is not who will win seats in the election but how many people will vote at all. What will remain unclear is how many of those who abstain will have done so in sympathy for the Islamists and how many simply could not be bothered.

Source: The Economist.
Link: http://www.economist.com/node/17421579?story_id=17421579.