MIDDLE EAST: Islamists join Jordan election contest, providing a fillip for reconciliation after Iraq war
By Nicolas Pelham Financial Times; Jun 16, 2003
Abdul Munem Abu Zant,the pro-Hamas candidate, hasan advantage whencanvassing for votes in Jordan's parliament elections on June 17.
He gets to press the flesh at least five times a day in his prayer trips to his mosque in the Hay Nazal quarter on the rocky slopes of the Jordanian capital, and finds a ready audience for his calls to liberate the Arab world from Crusaders and their clients.
Sadly for him, many of his most ardent supporters do not vote. One, who identifies himself as Mamdou, claims to support the banned Islamic Liberation party. This says the Hashemite kingdom, like all Arab states, is illegitimate, and that participation in its institutions - including parliament - is a sin. Veiled women voters may also be deterred by the requirement that they reveal their faces to male election monitors before entering the polling booth. Officials say it would be too complicated to provide female monitors.
Abu Zant is standing as an independent after he was expelled from the Islamic Action Front, Jordan's main Islamic party and best organised opposition, for defying an order not to stand. After talks with the royal palace, the IAF agreed to field just 30 candidates in the country's 110-member parliament.
Limited though it is, Islamist participation in the first elections under King Abdullah, after a boycott in 1997, will help to bring about a national reconciliation after the Iraq war pitted the monarchy against Islamist-led opposition to the deployment of US troops into the kingdom.
The much-delayed elections were announced a week after the fall of Baghdad, but observers question how far the polls will succeed in ending criticism of a monarch who since he dissolved parliament in June 1991 has ruled as an autocrat.
"Dissolving parliament was unprecedented since democratisation began in 1989," says Adeeba Mango, Jordan researcher in Amman for the International Crisis Group, the Brussels-based think-tank.
"In two years, the authorities introduced 160 temporary laws against less than 50 in the previous 60 years. People see a process of de- democratisation."
The king's men argue that rule by decree was vital to push through economic reform. Tuesday's elections, they say, will mark a new drive for political reform and allow Jordan to trumpet its multi-party system and Islamist participation rare in the region.
The elections come four days ahead of next week's meeting of the World Economic Forum in Jordan, to be attended by hundreds of political and business leaders and state dignitaries.
But critics say that a new electoral law, which increased the number of seats from 80 to 110, has undermined the validity of the polls.
"The increased numbers of seats has left Amman even less represented than before," says Fawzi Samhouri, who runs a pressure group, the Jordan Society for Citizens' Rights, which the authorities dissolved last year.
Votes are skewed, say analysts, to prevent Jordan's majority Palestinian population - concentrated in the central and northern cities - from dominating parliament, and rightwing Israelis contending that Jordan really is Palestine.
According to Mr Samhouri, Abu Zant's Amman constituency has an MP for each 52,255 voters, while Karak, the home town of the interior minister, has an MP for 6,000 voters.
Government advocates argue that it is not in Jordan's national interest to have a lower house dominated by Palestinians from refugee camps and radical Islamists and that the system has other ways to restore the balance.
"To say the system is anti-Palestinian is junk. It's another form of prejudice," says Mustafa Hermaneh, politics professor at Jordan University. The central bank governor and the ministers of planning and finance, he notes, are all Palestinian.
To quash suspicions of fraud, the authorities have added magnetic strips to identity cards, which voters are required to produce to obtain a ballot paper. The 1997 elections were marred by allegations that boxes had been filled with false ballots to prevent vocal critics like Toujan Faisal, Jordan's first female MP, from winning her seat.
Appeals for international election monitors have, however, been dismissed. Observers say the 'gerrymandering' is alienating potential voters in urban areas: Zarqa and Amman, home to over half of the population, account for less than a third of the seats.
The expected low turnout has not deterred candidates. In Abu Zant's constituency, 30 are competing for four seats. Candidates have festooned the byways with banners and erected Bedouin tents in the streets, where they woo voters with Arabic sweetmeats known as kanafe, coffee, and occasionally cash. Electioneering can be expensive, but winners receive their parliamentary incomes for life.
"They're really in for the spoils," says Adel Wahash, a bank clerk, who has to chose between two relatives -a former development minister and the Islamist candidate - also standing in Abu Zant's constituency.