Jordan - Election 2020
Voters in coronavirus-battered Jordan went the polls on 10 November 2020 in legislative elections focused on its economic crisis, heightened by the devastating pandemic. The assembly comprises 130 legislators, mainly pro-government tribal officials, businessmen and ex-security officials. Since 1993, the monarchy y used electoral laws to make a parliament of “services representative” who campaign on delivering government services to their narrow constituency — rather than a “political representative” who campaign on broader political issues.
Calls on social media to postpone the elections had grown, but the government says the vote will go ahead despite the coronavirus. However, campaigning did have to move to videos posted on social media platforms. Jordan had taken an economic hammering from COVID-19 with some $3bn lost in vital tourism revenues in the first nine months of 2020.
Jordan’s royal family is the Hashemite dynasty that traditionally ruled over the Muslim holy city of Mecca and shares a common ancestor with the Prophet Muhammad. Though the fall of the Ottoman Empire allowed the Hashemites to temporarily rule over Syria, Iraq, the Hejaz region of Saudi Arabia and the occupied West Bank, today they retain power only in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Since Jordan lost the West Bank and East Jerusalem to Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, it has been left with stewardship only over East Jerusalem’s Muslim holy sites.
A little over half of Jordan’s population of about 10 million is of Palestinian descent. It is also home to some 2.2 million Palestinian refugees and more than 650,000 Syrian refugees, according to the UN refugee agency. It has historically championed a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Jordan is allied with the US and was the second Arab country – after Egypt – to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1994. Since declaring independence from Britain in 1946, Jordan has had four monarchs: Abdullah I, Talal, Hussein, and today’s Abdullah II. King Hussein was forced to make democratic reforms in the late 1980s after street protests, first holding elections in 1989.
But Parliament’s power remains limited, with the king choosing the prime minister and the 65-member senate. In March 2020, the International Monetary Fund approved $1.3bn in aid for Jordan, subsequently adding about $396m in emergency funds to soften the impact of COVID-19. Jordan has been among the hardest-hit countries and is still struggling to contain the spread of COVID, with over 100,0020coronavirus cases and 1,100 deaths by election time.
Official figures put unemployment at 23 percent. War in the region is further taxing resources. Prior to hosting Syrian refugees, Jordan also hosted refugees fleeing conflict in Iraq. Jordan estimates the cost of hosting Syrian refugees at about $10bn and regularly complains of a lack of international support.
Political parties have been legal since 1992. The law places supervisory authority of political parties in the Ministry of Political and Parliamentary Affairs. Political parties must have 150 founding members, all of whom must be citizens habitually resident in the country and not be members of non-Jordanian political organizations, judges, or affiliated with the security services. There is no quota for women when founding a new political party. Parties may not be formed on the basis of religion, sect, race, gender, or origin (meaning that they may not make membership dependent on any of these factors). The law stipulates citizens may not be prosecuted or discriminated against for their political party affiliation. Most politicians believed that the GID would harass them if they attempted to form or join a political party with a policy platform.
In October 2019 the cabinet approved a new bylaw that increases the benchmarks parties must meet to receive funding in an effort to encourage actual political activity. Previously, all political parties who met certain membership levels received equal government funding whether or not they participated in elections or conducted any other activities. Some of the benchmarks in the new bylaw include the number of candidates fielded in elections, the percentage of votes won, the number of seats attained, and the number of female and youth candidates who win seats.
The Committee on Political Party Affairs oversees the activities of political parties. The secretary general of the Ministry of Political and Parliamentary Affairs chairs the committee, which includes a representative from the Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Culture, National Center for Human Rights, and civil society. The law grants the committee the authority to approve or reject applications to establish or dissolve parties. It allows party founders to appeal a rejection to the judiciary within 60 days of the decision. According to the law, approved parties can only be dissolved subject to the party’s own bylaws or by a judicial decision for affiliation with a foreign entity, accepting funding from a foreign entity, violating provisions of the law, or violating provisions of the constitution. The law prohibits membership in unlicensed political parties. There were approximately 50 registered political parties, but they were weak, generally had vague platforms, and were personality centered. The strongest and most organized political party was the Islamic Action Front.
King Abdullah appointed Prime Minister Omar al-Razzaz in 2018 to defuse the biggest protests in years over tax increases pushed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to reduce Jordan’s large public debt. The Parliament of Jordan has legislative powers but many in the country see it as little more than a rubber-stamp body comprised mostly of businessmen or individuals with tribal affiliations. Constitutionally, most powers rest with the king, who appoints governments and approves the legislation. The main political opposition in the country comes from a party drawn from the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, but it faces legal curbs on its activities.
Jordan’s King Abdullah dissolved parliament 27 September 2020, paving the way for an election in November 2020. Under constitutional rules, the government must resign within a week. In July, Jordan’s electoral commission set November 10 as the date for a parliamentary election after the monarch called for countrywide polls to be held at the end of the parliament’s four-year term. The move is likely to be followed by a wider government shake-up to ward off popular disenchantment over economic hardship worsened by the economic blow dealt by the coronavirus pandemic and over allegations of official corruption.
King Abdullah II named veteran diplomat Bisher al-Khasawneh as prime minister ahead of the vote, after parliament reached the end of its term. Khasawneh, 51, was designated to replace Omar al-Razzaz, who was appointed in the summer of 2018 to defuse the biggest protests in years over tax increases sought by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to reduce Jordan’s large public debt. The swearing-in ceremony on Monday came at a time of rising popular discontent about worsening economic conditions and curbs on public freedoms under emergency laws to contain the spread of COVID-19. Coming from a family that has long held senior political posts, Khasawneh has spent most of his public career as a diplomat, and most recently acted as a policy adviser to the king. Historically, prime ministers have been appointed for as little as one month or as long as three years, mainly to enact specific laws or resolve domestic or regional crises, after which they were dismissed.
Some 4.5 million people were eligible to vote for candidates to fill 130 seats in parliament, 15 of them reserved for women, from a field of 1,674 candidates running on 294 lists. A new assembly could help ease popular disenchantment about economic hardships and limits on civil and political freedoms under emergency laws.
Less than thirty percent of Jordanians headed to the polls to elect members of the nineteenth parliament, a historically low participation rate that matched the predicted voter turnout. In major cities such as Amman, where the Palestinian public is located, turnout was very low, perhaps at an unprecedented low. A total of 1,386,749 of the around 4.6 million eligible voters cast their ballots to elect their representatives from 1,674 registered candidates, including 360 women. Prime Minister and Minister of Defence Bisher Al Khasawneh stressed that Jordan has “succeeded in implementing the Constitutional entitlement by holding the parliamentary elections in an efficient manner and under an exceptional circumstance as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic”.
This year, the most important opposition faction, the Islamic Action Front (IAF), the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, presented its candidates. In 2016, the IAF won 16 seats out of 130 in the parliament, after boycotting the 2010 and 2013 elections. Left-wing and Arab nationalist groups are also in the running, along with independent aspirants, many of them representatives of tribes loyal to the monarchy.
Only the requisite 15 women were elected, down from 20 in the outgoing parliament. A hundred newcomers joined the new parliament, including around 20 retired senior military officers. The house remained dominated by businessmen and representatives of powerful tribes. The Islamic Action Front, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood and largest opposition faction, took eight seats, half the number it held in the previous parliament. But IAF secretary general Mourad al-Adayleh told AFP his party had in fact won 10 seats, including two on another list.
Several regions in Jordan witnessed a state of tension with demonstrators brandishing and firing automatic weapons, following the announcement of the results of the parliamentary elections. In the outgoing parliament, the representatives of the tribes strongly opposed a bill aimed at making an amendment to the current law, dating back to 1952, regulating possession of weapons. The new bill which was introduced by former Minister of the Interior, Salama Hammad. Clans in Jordan consider carrying weapons part of their identity and tribal heritage and a sign of strength and prestige. In recent years, they have resisted attempts to have their weapons taken away from them through the introduction of new legal frameworks regulating arms possession and use.
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