Jordanian voters go to polls amid fears of a wider war

Caption

An Jordanian citizen votes in historic elections for the Parliament of Jordan's 138-seat lower house on Tuesday in Amman, Jordan. Voters are deciding their representatives in the 20th Lower House of Parliament. / Getty Images

AMMAN — Jordanian voters are going to the polls Tuesday in the kingdom’s first parliamentary elections since a new election law two years ago paved the way for greater participation by political parties in the country’s political system.

About 5 million Jordanians are eligible to vote - almost half of Jordan’s roughly 11 million population. More than 600,000 of them turned 18 since the last elections and are eligible to vote for the first time.

Jordan, a key security ally of the United States and one of the few Arab countries to have signed a peace treaty with Israel, is a constitutional monarchy and the parliament has limited power.

But the election is seen as a key gauge of democratization efforts and the effect of public anger over Israeli attacks in Gaza.

Election at a time of war in Gaza

The war in Gaza has overshadowed almost all aspects of life in the kingdom, where a majority of citizens are of Palestinian origin - those who fled or were expelled from their homes with the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and subsequent wars. Daily Israeli attacks in Gaza, and increasingly, the occupied West Bank, have sparked intense anger in the small kingdom. The war has also devastated Jordan’s economy, where tourism is a major sector.

Jordan is the only other Arab country apart from Egypt to have signed a full peace-treaty with Israel. The treaty resulted in security cooperation and economic ties between Jordan and neighboring Israel but has done little over the years to tamp down anger among Jordanians over Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

That anger has grown into rage over the war in Gaza, where the health ministry says more than 40,000 people, many of them women and children, have been killed in Israeli air strikes since the militant group Hamas attacked Israel last October. Israel says about 1200 civilians and soldiers were killed in that attack.

Jordanian leaders are particularly worried about increasing Israeli attacks recently in the occupied West Bank. Israel says it is targeting armed militants while many in Jordan believe that the military action and an increase in illegal Israeli settlement are meant to push Palestinians across the river and into Jordan.

For the first time, political parties are enabled to play a bigger role

The election law two years ago is meant to promote the establishment of political parties in a political system dominated by tribal ties. Forty-one of the 138-seat parliament have been set aside for political party candidates in this election. Analysts say The move paved the way for greater participation by liberal and secular parties in Jordan’s conservative society.

“The political parties have not really dug in roots in terms of political organization,” says Mustafa Hamarneh, a senior member of the Jordanian Social Democratic Party and a Jordanian senator.

He said, however, this election marks the first time that political parties are running on platforms rather than appealing to voters’ sense of identity, such as religious or tribal links, he told NPR after casting his vote. “Let’s hope that this experiment will succeed at least a little and it will be a beginning for future development.”

Despite the changes in election law, the new parliament is expected to be roughly similar in outlook to previous ones - made up mostly of pro-government and tribal members. This election raises a quota for women’s representation to 18 members from 15 in the last election.

It also lowered the age of eligibility for candidates to 25 from 30 years of age - a potentially significant development in a country where roughly half of citizens are under age 25.

Jordan, a small country lacking natural resources with a large population of Syrian and other refugees, is highly dependent on US and other foreign aid. Much of that aid is tied to Jordan’s contribution to helping secure Israeli borders, including hosting a large U.S. military presence on bases outside the Jordanian capital.

Under King Abdullah II, the country has tried to balance its need to maintain relations with Israel while recognizing public anger over Israeli attacks in Gaza and the West Bank.

The militant Palestinian group Hamas sprung from Muslim Brotherhood ideology in the late 1980s after the first Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation. The Brotherhood is banned in many Arab countries as a potential threat to hereditary rulers and autocratic leaders such as Egyptian president Abdul Fatah al-Sisi.

Jordan has allowed a Brotherhood-affiliated party, the Islamic Action Front, to operate but under relatively strict controls — including approving mosque sermons and limits on public protests.

Hamarneh, a former head of Jordan’s Center for Strategic Studies and the government-appointed Economic and Social Council, said all parties support the Palestinians in the war in Gaza and were unlikely to be able to differentiate themselves to voters on that issue.

“However, organization here matters and the Islamists or the Muslim Brotherhood, they have the best political organization in the country. So that could be effective,” he said.