Despite Praise for Elections, Reform Stagnating in Jordan
Last Tuesday, November 20, Jordan held parliamentary elections to broad international acclaim. The vote was the second since Jordan’s monarch, King Abdullah II, took power in 1999, and independent Jordanian observers certified the election as free and fair. Indeed, the elections went smoothly, a record number of female candidates competed and won seats, and voter turnout was an impressive fifty-four percent. But these facts belie the tenuousness of Jordanian democracy: voter fraud was practically unnecessary because eligibility for the elections was so restricted; international observers were uninvited, and voter turnout was inflated by low registration rates and high returns in areas supporting pro-government candidates. In short, long-promised substantive reforms are still a way off, and may be slipping further away.
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One Response to “Despite Praise for Elections, Reform Stagnating in Jordan”
This is the eternal qestion in the ME: is radical reform in national elections the best route to reform a society?
Every one of these countries contain a popular extreme Islamist element, which could use elections as a means to gian the power to eventaully destroy democracy, instead of fostering it.
It’s beyond me to foretell the future, but I can certainly understand a need for cautious, incremental steps. I wonder if the focus on national elections is not putting the cart before the horse. I would pay more attention on a country’s judcicial system and areas like education, if I were to form US policy. Preparing a society for democracy seems like a necessary first stage to delivering it via national elections, regardless of the state of the society.