Islamist opposition calls for revamped election law

The Islamic Action Front (IAF), Jordan’s largest opposition party, has called for the formulation of “a democratic election law” to ensure greater representation in parliament. “An amendment on political parties, however positive, will not achieve the desired political reform without an election law that grants political parties the right to participate and influence the parliament,” the IAF noted in a statement this week. The party’s advisory council, headed by Abdul Latif Arabiat, declared that the law must also pave the way for the creation of an assembly “capable of guiding, monitoring and questioning” the government. The IAF, which boycotted parliamentary elections in 1997 in protest against the current voting system, has 17 deputies in the lower house of parliament. The Election Law, enacted in 1993, maintains a one-person, one vote-system that has traditionally favoured tribal East Bank constituencies over the largely Palestinian urban populations. At least half of Jordan’s 5.6 million citizens are of Palestinian descent, whose families settled in the Hashemite Kingdom after successive Arab-Israeli wars. The IAF insists that the current law is unfair, giving rise to unequal representation of the country's constituencies and ensuring a pro-government majority in parliament. For example, under current electoral legislation, the city of Karak in southern Jordan with 208,000 Transjordanian inhabitants is allotted four seats in parliament. The same number of seats is reserved for the city of Zarqa, about 15 km east of Amman, which has a population of 815,000, some 90 percent of whom are of Palestinian origin. The IAF, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, also criticised what it described as “government restrictions” on popular organisations, particularly the Islamic movement. “Maintaining the current restrictions on political parties means a further decline in public freedoms, human rights and democracy,” the statement said. Under a directive from King Abdullah, a National Agenda Steering Committee was charged in February of last year with drafting a new, more equitable election law. Last October, the committee presented two reform proposals to the monarch. The first recommended a mixed voting system granting citizens two votes: one for a district candidate and one for a party list, which could extend to individuals working under a single platform. The second proposal suggested granting citizens a single ballot or preferential vote, whereby voters must choose between a district candidate or from a party list. Both proposals are currently being discussed by a committee headed by Prime Minister Marouf Bakhit.