A voter arriving to cast her ballot in Amman on Tuesday.
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Islamists Gain in Jordan, Reflecting Public Anger Over Gaza War

The political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood won a sizable share of seats in Parliament, though not enough to challenge the government’s pro-Western tilt.

by · NY Times

An Islamist party that made opposition to the Israeli invasion of Gaza the centerpiece of its campaign scored a significant success in elections in Jordan, results released in the kingdom on Wednesday showed, giving the Muslim Brotherhood a bigger foothold in Jordan’s Parliament.

The Islamic Action Front, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been banned in several countries in the Arab world, will now control a sizable bloc in Parliament, according to results announced by the electoral commission. It won 31 of the 138 seats.

But the government will likely retain a substantial majority, given that two parties allied to it secured around 70 seats combined. Independent deputies and those representing smaller parties, as well as deputies selected under a quota system, are also likely to back government policies.

So while Islamists may now have a greater voice in Jordan, the kingdom’s reputation as one of the more stable and electorally open countries in the region will probably not be shaken, analysts said.

“It’s a result that the government will be broadly happy with,” said Neil Quilliam, an expert in Jordanian and regional politics at Chatham House think tank in London.

Mr. Quilliam described the vote as a safety valve of sorts for public anger over the Israeli assault against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, where tens of thousands of people have been killed.

“The system is flexible enough to allow the elections and to allow the Islamists to have a voice,” he said.

The election was the first following a series of reforms introduced by King Abdullah II aimed at promoting greater democratization, including changes to the electoral law that shifted the focus from individual candidates to political parties.

Even before the war in Gaza, which began after Hamas led an attack on Israel that killed about 1,200 people, discontent over the government’s ties to Israel ran high in Jordan, where many citizens are of Palestinian origin. The assault on Gaza and the Israeli governments crackdown in the occupied West Bank have fueled public anger, leading to a series of mass demonstrations. Hundreds of protesters have been arrested.

King Abdullah has described suffering in Gaza as unbearable, called for a cease-fire and spoken in favor of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. The government has also denounced Israel’s conduct of the conflict and said that any transfer of Palestinians from the West Bank to Jordan would amount to a declaration of war.

At the same time, Jordan is a regional ally of Washington. Its military joined Israel, the United States and other countries in shooting down a barrage of missiles and drones fired by Iran toward Israel in April.

The election results suggest that the government’s balancing act has had only limited success, said Mohammad Abu Rumman, a political analyst and columnist based in the Jordanian capital, Amman. “Voting for the Brotherhood reflects the deepening trust deficit between government and the public, a chasm that has widened over the years and has been largely ignored by officialdom,” he said.

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt as a Pan-Islamic organization, but during the campaign, the Islamic Action also criticized the Jordanian government’s domestic policies, seeking to capitalize on discontent over unemployment, corruption, poverty and other issues .

The party described the election gains on Wednesday as a victory for the country as a whole.

“The advance results we have achieved will strengthen the power, resilience and stability of our state,” a spokesman, Moath al-Khawaideh, said in a post on Facebook. The vote, he said, affirmed the party’s stance on Palestinian resistance.

Voting turnout stood at around 32 percent, slightly up from the previous election, but a clear signal of a disillusioned electorate, despite the government’s democratization drive. Participation was highest in rural areas, where tribal leaders who are often aligned with the government have traditionally overseen bloc voting, and lower in urban centers like Amman.

The low turnout may also reflect the fact that Parliament has no direct role in shaping foreign policy, which under the Constitution is overseen by the monarch. Experts said this might have blunted the Brotherhood’s effort to make the war a central issue.

Many Jordanians appear not to view Parliament as capable of addressing their concerns, said Amer Al Sabaileh, a regional security expert and university professor based in Amman.

“It’s a failure on the level of voter participation,” he said. “Nobody bought the story of change.”

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