Elections were held in Jordan on Sept. 10 to appoint 138 deputies to the House of Representatives, the lower house of parliament, which saw the Islamic Action Front party \u2013 the political wing of the local Muslim Brotherhood organization \u2013 gaining the majority of votes as a single party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Voter turnout was about 32 percent, a slight increase from the previous 2020 elections, in the first elections following the 2022 reform of the electoral law, which was desired by the ruler in order to strengthen the role of parties while de-tribalizing the traditional composition of the parliament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In spite of the remarkable result of the Islamist, however, the majority of parliamentary seats were won by a multitude of smaller parties and independent candidates representing the country’s centrist, liberal and tribal forces, loyal to the crown and expression of Jordanian nationalism, thus keeping the lower house’s ability to control the elections intact for the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Sept. 10 vote, however, demonstrated how the weight of the Palestinian community in the country, which accounts for about 30 percent of Jordan’s population, has become progressively more significant, leading to changes in distribution that do not go unnoticed. The percentage of voters within the Palestinian communities is certainly higher than within the indigenous Jordanian communities, where the latter are moreover characterized by a growing profile of disaffection that discourages most from going to the polls, thus keeping the turnout figure consistently low.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the same time, the Palestinian community’s vote appears to be increasingly conditioned by elements exogenous to the Jordanian political context, as demonstrated in the last elections, where the issue of the conflict in Gaza was a major component of that community’s choice, prompting the leadership of the local Muslim Brotherhood \u2013 which has been banned as a party but not as a social organization \u2013 to speak of a genuine plebiscite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although the new government will remain controlled, as in the past, by centrist, liberal, and tribal forces, therefore, it cannot but be seen as an important factor of change that the Islamic Action Front has essentially tripled its parliamentary clout over the last two elections, now becoming the leading party by number of votes in the entire country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Subsequent to the elections, however, as per constitutional procedure, on Sept. 15 Sovereign Abdullah II accepted the resignation of the government led by Prime Minister Bisher al-Khasawneh, a former diplomat who led the 2020 incumbent executive, appointing technocrat and former planning minister Jafar Hassan as the new prime minister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hassan is now tasked with exploring the terms of a parliamentary majority \u2013 which could potentially already have more than 100 seats \u2013 and forming a new government. No new elements are expected from this exploratory phase, as it is already certain that the line of continuity of the centrist, liberal and tribal groups is assured by the absolute majority of votes emerging from the collective tally of seats won by the traditionalist parties and independents, largely an expression of the tribal vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The current government will remain in office ad interim until the formation and approval of the new government appointed by Jafar Hassan, which must immediately address two urgent dossiers. The first is that on economic policy, trying to stem the heavy crisis that has been affecting the country for some time, and the second is that of the impact of the conflict in Gaza on Jordanian politics, which is affected by a growing role of opposition forces clamoring for a review of relations with Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hassan is an esteemed technocrat, a graduate of the prestigious U.S.-based Harvard University, who was specifically asked by the ruler to identify solutions to move forward with major infrastructure projects in the energy and water sectors, which benefit from large international contributions but have suffered conspicuous slowdowns in execution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, the economic crisis affecting the country, which has more than $50 billion in public debt and has led to persistent stagnation for more than a decade, is also a consequence of the increasingly unstable dynamics of regional balances, characterized by the presence of conflicts and deep crises even in neighboring countries. Conditions that have, moreover, severely affected the tourism sector, once a major element of the national economy, which has seen a drastic decline in attendance and consequent revenues over the past two years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Elections were held in Jordan on Sept. 10 to appoint 138 deputies to the House of Representatives, the lower house of parliament, which saw the Islamic Action Front party \u2013 the political wing of the local Muslim Brotherhood organization \u2013 gaining the majority of votes as a single party. Voter turnout was about 32 percent, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":3581,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"slim_seo":{"title":"After the elections in Jordan, King Abdullah II appoints Jafar Hassan as new prime minister","description":"After the elections in Jordan, King Abdullah II appoints Jafar Hassan as new prime minister"},"_slim_seo_primary_term_category":0,"_slim_seo_primary_term_post_tag":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[129],"class_list":["post-3583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articolo-en","tag-jordan"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalstudies.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalstudies.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalstudies.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalstudies.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalstudies.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3583"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalstudies.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3584,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalstudies.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3583\/revisions\/3584"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalstudies.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalstudies.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalstudies.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalstudies.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}