Gerrymandering:Jordan’s election Bad for the king
Dividing constituencies (of a voting area) so as to
give one party an unfair advantage
Manipulating or
adapting to one’s advantage
Jordan’s election
Bad for the king
A new parliament is
unlikely to solve the problems of king or country
JORDANIANS go to the
polls on January 23rd, the day after the Israeli election, but for people of
Palestinian origin, who make up a majority in Jordan and a large minority (at
least a fifth) in Israel, there are disarming similarities apart from the
timing. Increasing numbers of them are likely to boycott the polls in despair
at systems that seem designed to keep them out.
Jordanians of
Palestinian descent make up less than a tenth of the parliament’s members,
thanks to gerrymandering**. In two mainly Palestinian districts of Amman,
the capital, 310,000 voters elect as many MPs as 122,000 tribesmen in Karak,
a southern town where Bedouin predominate. “It’s not the ballots that are
rigged as much as the system itself,” says Ahmad Obeidat, one of several former
prime ministers who, alongside the kingdom’s largest opposition group, the
Muslim Brotherhood, is calling for a boycott of the poll.
Mindful of growing
demands for people power, King Abdullah has made a few concessions. Although
most MPs still represent their local districts, he has opened a fifth of the
seats to candidates standing on national lists and increased the quota for
women. But the odds are still stacked against Palestinians. Only a few of the
61 groups competing for the 27 party-list seats are headed by a Jordanian of
Palestinian origin. The new parliament, says a former justice minister, will be
a clone of its predecessor. It will be dominated by tribesmen of the East Bank,
who still dominate the security forces and the state sector, not those of
Palestinian descent.
Jordanians argue over
whether King Abdullah or his all-powerful security forces are to blame. The
king has shied from copying his Moroccan counterpart, who has managed to co-opt
his Islamists. Some say King Abdullah’s hands are tied by his East Bank
intelligence officers, bent on preserving a system of perks accumulated over
decades. Above all, the king and his closest security men seem determined to
keep the Muslim Brotherhood and the Palestinians who vote for them out of
power. Jordan’s military budget is still not subject to parliamentary scrutiny,
says a former senior official; the security service, he adds, has “a veto over
cabinet posts, chairs of committees and over half the MPs”. Many MPs, says a
former head of intelligence, are bankrolled by the service.
“You can buy votes for 20 dinars [$28],” chuckles an MP
seeking a third term in Amman. Some candidates have fancy marquees with
chandeliers to canvass votes. Parading Bedouin origins, their billboards sport
the names of clans, not policies.
However malleable the
new parliament, the king will require it to push through some biting austerity
measures demanded by the IMF as the price for bailing out Jordan’s debt-saddled
economy. A fairer election would have helped. When the king cut fuel subsidies
in November, the Islamists fanned protests by the urban poor resentful of
soaring costs. Three people were killed. But now the IMF wants Abdullah to cut
soaring electricity subsidies, too. And the IMF wants him to slash the
public-sector perks and jobs he showered on East Bankers, nowadays almost as
disgruntled as the Palestinians. Whatever the results of the election, the king
will still be in a bind.
Jan 19th 2013 | AMMAN |
Rueful Abdullah
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