Jordan Times
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Karak Governorate registers
68% voter turnout
By Khalid Neimat
KARAK - Motivated mainly by family ties rather than political reasons, many in
the Karak Governorate headed to the polls Tuesday to elect their representatives
to the 15th Parliament.
Despite dusty and rainy weather, some even drove from Amman to get to voting
centres across this southern governorate which registered a high turnout of 68
per cent, according to officials.
Karak Deputy Governor and Operation Room Coordinator Musa Jbour said the number
of voters reached 75,636, out of a total of 111,555 eligible voters.
The governorate’s First District recorded a 62 per cent voter turnout, while in
the Second District it was 60 per cent, according to Jbour.
The Third and Fifth districts registered 70 per cent each, while in the Fourth
and Sixth districts, the turnout was 77 and 78 per cent respectively, Jbour
added.
Citizens and officials agreed that the election process was conducted in a
“reasonable manner”.
“I voted in a smooth way, with no difficulties at all… the process was
excellent,” Naji Sooub, a First District voter, told The Jordan Times yesterday.
Representatives of some candidates criticised the voting mechanism for
illiterate voters, under which they ask election officials to write down the
name of the candidate of choice instead of writing it down on a ballot at the
voting booth.
They claimed that some voters used this mechanism to inform candidates’
representatives in the voting room of their choice.
“We were surprised that doctors, engineers and high-ranking ex-servicemen voted
this way,” a candidate’s representative of from the First District told The
Jordan Times.
“This was a mistake on the part of the committee supervising the voting site,”
he added.
The start of the voting process was delayed by an hour at one of the polling
centres in Muta, 20km south of Karak, because of a network connection failure,
according to a supervisor, who asked not to be named.
Meanwhile, several women candidates were seen leading voters into the polling
centres.
“We are supporting a female candidate and working hard so she would win by
direct competition rather than through the women’s quota,” said Fatima Mifleh.
According to officials, women’s participation in the governorate exceeded that
of men. In one polling centre in the Third District, which is considered a major
poverty pocket in the governorate, nearly 1,000 women voted compared to 610 men.
After several candidates withdrew from the race last week, the final number of
contenders in Karak stood at 84, including 28 women. They competed for 10 seats
allocated to the governorate.
The only political party fielding a candidate in Karak was the Islamic Action
Front.
Preliminary results showed that this First District candidate, Abdul Hamid
Thuneibat won a seat.
Another heavyweight who was successful in Karak Governorate was former Lower
House Speaker Abdul Hadi Majali.