New Parliament Elected in Jordan

Jordanians elected a new Parliament on Wednesday, with the Muslim Brotherhood was boycotting the vote, arguing the electoral system was rigged in favor of the monarchy.

Authorities kept polling stations open for an extra hour to allow more people to vote. Hussein Bani Hani, a spokesman for the electoral commission, said initial figures put turnout at 56.5 percent of Jordan’s 2.3 million registered voters.

He said the final percentage may be slightly higher after the data is fed to a nationwide computer system.

The Independent Elections Commission is likely to announce results during a press conference expected Thursday.

The new legislature will have the power to choose the prime minister, one of a series of reforms that King Abdullah II has undertaken over the past two years to try to keep the lid on rising anger at home as political turmoil has swept across the Middle East.

The reforms also make the elected legislature responsible for much of the nation’s day-to-day affairs, and allow for greater freedom of opinion and assembly.

Foreign policy and security matters, however, remain in the king’s hands. Critics dismissed the vote as little more than a political ploy, and argue that the monarchy will still retain its absolute powers.

Prime minister Abdullah Ensour, who is expected to tender his resignation to the king shortly after the vote, called the election a “stepping stone, or a station, on the path of more vigorous, serious, real and genuine reforms.”
“More democracy is coming,” he told reporters as he cast his ballot in his northwestern hometown of Salt.

But government critics, led by the Brotherhood, say the king’s moves do not go far enough or fast enough to end his monopoly on power.

“The parliament being elected has no color or taste in the absence of the opposition,” said Zaki Bani Irsheid, a leading member of the Islamic Action Front, the Brotherhood’s political arm.
A statement by the Brotherhood’s youth wing described the elections as a “funeral for our national democracy.”