Jordan holds legislative elections after the 2022 reform and amid tensions over the conflict in the Middle East

The amendments approved two years ago, which increased the king’s powers, seek to increase the weight of the parties

September 9 (EUROPA PRESS) –

Jordan’s population is called to the polls on Tuesday for elections that will determine the composition of the new lower house of parliament, the first vote since the reshuffle of the electoral law approved in 2022 as part of a reform process to increase political representation.

The changes were made following recommendations made by a royal committee set up in 2021 by King Abdullah II to improve governance, increase the participation of young people and women and modernise the political framework, following intermittent protests in recent years calling for greater democratisation.

The constitutional amendments included changing the language of the Constitution to explicitly mention “Jordanian women,” while increasing the number of seats in the lower house — the only one elected by vote, as the Senate is made up of 65 seats allocated directly by the king — from 130 to 138.

The new law also requires that one third of political parties’ candidates be women and 20 percent be people under 35, while the minimum age for candidates to run for elected office is lowered from 30 to 25.

This will, for the first time, allocate 41 seats to the more than 30 officially registered parties, most of them with a pro-government line, while maintaining a voting system that gives greater weight to sparsely populated areas dominated by tribal groups, compared to population centers inhabited by a greater number of Jordanians of Palestinian descent.

The Jordanian authorities are thus seeking to increase the weight of political parties, which were banned in 1957 after the elections of the previous year resulted in a government close to the then Egyptian president, the pan-Arab Gamal Abdelnaser. Although the measure was withdrawn in 1992, political parties remained marginal in the country.

THE KING’S COMPETENCES

These changes to the electoral law also expanded the powers of the king, who can appoint and dismiss senior officials in the judiciary – including the president of the Judicial Council – and other state bodies, without the need for the support of the prime minister or any ministry with the authority.

In addition, a National Security Council was created, which includes numerous figures, including the Prime Minister, the head of the Army, the head of the Intelligence Services and the heads of Defense, Foreign Affairs and Interior, as well as two members appointed directly by the monarch, to address matters of security and foreign policy.

In fact, the Jordanian constitution stipulates that most powers are vested in the monarch, who can also appoint the prime minister and dissolve the government. Thus, the legislature can force the resignation of the executive through a vote of no confidence, although governments have faced few obstacles in this regard because parliament is usually in the hands of allied figures.

In May, Abdullah II himself stressed that the elections would be “a milestone” in the process of “political modernisation” and maintained that “it requires the efforts and participation of everyone”, in an appeal for the population to go to the polls to participate in the legislative elections.

He explained that the elections represent “the beginning of a new phase of party and parliamentary action” at a time when the country is facing an economic crisis and the conflict in the Middle East due to the military offensive launched by Israel against the Gaza Strip following the attacks carried out on October 7 by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and other Palestinian factions.

THE REGIONAL CONTEXT

The elections are also seen as an attempt by the monarch to maintain an image of stability in the country despite the conflict in the Middle East, amid the risk of spreading hostilities due to the increase in tensions between Israel and Iran, with international efforts not having resulted in a ceasefire. In addition, they come just two days after a Jordanian killed three Israeli guards at a border crossing, an incident from which Amman has distanced itself.

The country, which has more than 11 million people, many of them of Palestinian descent, has repeatedly called for a ceasefire and warned Israel against forcibly displacing its population from the West Bank, as Egypt has done with regard to Palestinians in Gaza. Jordan has also come under fire for allowing third countries to use its airspace to shoot down drones and missiles launched by Iran at Israel in April in response to Israel’s bombing of the Iranian consulate in the Syrian capital Damascus.

The situation has led to increased security challenges for Amman, due to the growing influence of Iran and its allied groups in the region – mainly the Lebanese Shiite militia party Hezbollah, the Houthi rebels in Yemen and the dozens of pro-Iranian militias in Iraq, with which Jordan shares a border – in addition to problems with drug trafficking from Syria.

Domestically, the conflict in Gaza – which has already left nearly 41,000 Palestinians dead – has been one of the main issues of the Islamic Action Front (FAI), the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has led the authorities to take a heavy hand with the protests in the country despite their support for the Palestinian cause in international forums and their criticism of Israel.

In April, Amnesty International called on the authorities to end their actions against demonstrations in support of Palestinians and to release dozens of activists detained for their criticism of the policies of Amman, which signed a peace agreement with Israel in 1994. “The Jordanian government must immediately release all those who have been arbitrarily detained since October 2023 for their pro-Palestinian activism,” said Reina Wehbi, UN campaigner for Jordan.

“The government must ensure that protesters and activists are free to peacefully criticize the government’s policies toward Israel without being attacked by security forces or violently detained,” he said, adding that “these cases reveal the severity of the Jordanian authorities’ crackdown on pro-Palestinian protesters and expose flagrant violations of the right to a fair trial, ill-treatment of detainees, and an unequivocal pattern of abuse and denial of justice.”

Some 5,115,000 voters have registered to take part in the vote, which will see more than 1,600 candidates contesting. Independent Electoral Commission President Musa Maaita recently stressed that an electronic platform will be set up to publish results updates and promised that the process will be transparent.