Jordan Times
Monday, March 30, 1998
Changes to draft elections law inadequate —
opposition
By Francesca Ciriaci
AMMAN — Opposition and pro-government parties agree that
there are only “minor changes” in the draft elections
law recently unveiled by the government but are divided in their
evaluation of it.
The draft legislation maintains most of the features of the
previous 1993 law — most importantly, the one-person,
one-vote system, long rejected by the opposition.
While the Islamist-led opposition reiterates that the electoral
formula is aimed at limiting their representation in Parliament,
pro-government forces respond that equality demands that all
voters be granted the same number of votes.
The government’s draft, which has not yet reached the Lower
House’s legal committee in charge of examining it but was
published in the Arabic press Thursday, lowers the voting age
from 19 to 18.
It maintains the current ethnic and religious quotas in the
80-member House — nine seats for Christians and three seats
for Chechens and Circassians.
The draft law does not increase the number of deputies and
maintains the ban on voting for members of the security and
military forces, as well as the judiciary.
The government’s draft also replaces the previous voting
cards with magnetic identity cards, a move the government says
will help avoid irregularities and prevent voters from casting
more than one ballot.
“But the real reason of people’s discontent with the
[elections] law, the one-person, one-vote system, remains,”
protested Ishaq Farhan, head of the Shura council of the powerful
Islamic Action Front (IAF).
The IAF and its mother organisation, the Muslim Brotherhood, led
a coalition of 11 opposition parties that boycotted the last
elections in protest against the one-person, one-vote formula and
what they termed “a steady erosion of parliamentary
authority under successive governments.”
“It is too early to say whether we will boycott the next
elections, too,” Dr. Farhan said. “We are waiting for
the government’s official announcement, and then we will
take our stand.”
Deputy Khalil Haddadin, who is also secretary general of the
Jordanian Arab Ba’ath Socialist Party, said the draft law
does not present “any change whatsoever.”
“The government is saying that it lowered the voting age,
but even that is a bluff.”
According to Article 3 of the government’s draft, all
Jordanians who have reached the age of 18 by Jan. 1, 2001 are
entitled to vote. “But, as the elections are held in
November, by the time those 18-year-olds go to the polls, most of
them will be 19,” Mr. Haddadin said.
Other observers said that, though they had already ruled out
drastic alterations such as the abolition of the one-person,
one-vote system, they still expected more changes, especially in
regard to the allocation of seats.
“There are no substantial changes, only new
formalities,” commented former minister Ibrahim Izzeddin, a
liberal.
“But people were annoyed most by the administrative
divisions,” he said.
The government’s draft maintains the constituencies of the
previous law, which divided the Kingdom into 13 demographically
unequal areas.
The opposition has long protested as undemocratic the allocation
of seats among different districts, noting that in some
constituencies, candidates reach Parliament with a few hundreds
votes, while in others winners have to obtain thousands of
ballots.
Deputies reached by the Jordan Times yesterday said the draft
would very likely be discussed during an extraordinary session of
Parliament this summer.
Though the first ordinary session of Jordan’s 13th
Parliament was closed Saturday by a Royal Decree, the MPs said
His Majesty King Hussein will respond positively to a recent
request for an extraordinary session signed by 41 deputies.