The political situation in Jordan is changing after the victory of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Islamic Action Front in the September 10 elections. It obtained 31 of the total 138 seats in Parliament, tripling its strength compared to 2020.
As Deutsche Welle points out in its analysis, these elections are significantly different from previous ones. They were designed by the Jordanian monarchy as “the beginning of an important chapter for parliamentarism”, and this is because they adhere to a far-reaching “plan for the modernization of the Jordanian political system”, characterized by local media, which began to be prepared as early as 2020.
That year, King Abdullah II appointed a 92-member expert commission, which in 2021 drew up a three-phase plan to overhaul the state’s institutions, with the aim of bringing them closer to the standards of modern Western parliamentary democracies. However, opposition spokespeople criticized the constitutional revision carried out that same year, which introduced new superpowers to King Abdullah II, most notably the ability to appoint and dismiss supreme judges at all levels and branches.
Thus, the changes to the electoral law that guaranteed the reduction of the voting age (from 30 to 25 years) and the mandatory parliamentary representation of women and minority groups, were characterized by the Palace’s critics as meaningless interventions of a purely communicative nature. However, the relaxation of the procedures for the creation of political parties – an issue that has worried local public opinion for decades – is undoubtedly a step forward.
Increased frequency, ambiguous indications
Voter turnout this year was 32.25%, a 2% increase compared to the 2020 elections – a figure that is also apparently related to the 600,000 Jordanian citizens who voted this year for the first time. As expected, the highest turnout was recorded in the traditionally pro-royalist city of Karak (61.73%).
On the contrary, it is striking that the turnout in Basman, Amman’s second district, which is more populous and economically weaker, was lower, with a turnout rate of 18.29%. On the other hand, it is encouraging that only two of the country’s 38 registered political parties decided not to participate in this year’s elections.
It is important that the “Islamic Action Front”, which expresses the positions of the Muslim Brotherhood, decides not to boycott the elections. This is a development that strengthens political pluralism, but does not reassure the monarchist establishment in the following sense: the new institutional framework of 2021 encourages the establishment of political parties, but without succeeding in bringing together the many, small and personal pro-monarchist parties under the umbrella of a single “pro-monarchist” party formation – a goal that the Jordanian monarchy has apparently been pursuing for years.
The pandemic advanced the Palace’s plans
Since the creation of the Jordanian state, the local Western-oriented monarchy has sought to secularize the political map as much as possible and to bring the source of local religious sentiment to tolerable levels. At the same time, however, being aware that the majority of the country’s citizens are of Palestinian origin with a strong refugee memory, the Jordanian deep state seeks to cultivate and strengthen a distinct “Jordanian” identity as much as possible.
It is no coincidence that both the recent constitutional revision and the new “plan to strengthen parliamentarism” were promoted during the 2020-2021 biennium, in the midst of the pandemic. At that time, the state apparatus managed to convince citizens that it was capable of controlling the situation. The generalized curfew was accompanied by the unprecedented image of soldiers delivering food and necessities door to door, skyrocketing the popularity of the “uniform”. In this indirect way, the “secularized” character of the Jordanian monarchy was asserted against all kinds of anti-vaccination Islamic views, while at the same time capitalizing on the country’s many hospitals and pharmacies – as Amman has managed, in recent decades, to establish itself as the leading medical tourism destination in the Arab world. Thus, during the 2020-2021 biennium, the Jordanian monarchy felt communicatively empowered to promote its own priorities, both ideological and political.
The communicative euphoria also grew stronger after the pandemic. The Palace cultivated the public image of Crown Prince Hussein, emphasizing that he is aware of the special responsibility of the Jordanian throne to protect the pilgrimages to Jerusalem. His wedding was celebrated with great solemnity, as was the wedding of his sister Iman to a young businessman of Greek origin. Finally, the episodic house arrest of the controversial Prince Hamza in April 2021 increased the prestige of the royal family – with the Islamic opposition carefully remaining aloof.
The Palestinian and Jordanian reality
However, the war that broke out in Gaza has brought back into the news everything that the Jordanian monarchy would like to forget. The open wound of the Palestinians has shaken the country with mass demonstrations and the candidates of the “Islamic Action Front” have criticized Jordan’s delicately balanced Realpolitik.
In recent months, there have been suggestions that Tuesday’s parliamentary elections should be postponed. However, the Jordanian monarchy has preferred not to postpone them, but to gauge public opinion through the messages from the polls.