Elections in Jordan

Hello Everyone!

 Well, sadly my Jordanian journey is coming to an end but I still have 2 weeks left after the 10 day Eid holiday! I am spending Eid in Paris and my flight is tonight, but I still have a few hours so I thought I would write a new blog post discussing the elections that caused us to have a day off on Tuesday!

 You might be thinking to yourself what I thought when I first heard about the elections: Why would there be elections if there is a King?? Well, in Jordan the government is structured with a King and Parliament. The King is obviously not elected but born into the royal family just like in England or Sweden. But, people run for seats on Parliament. So, this Tuesday the elections occurred - but, just like in the States, the process began quite a while ago.

 Probably a month and a half ago I was on my way to golf when I first noticed hundreds of posters with big  faces and arabic writing on them. I began to recognize certain faces which appeared on poser after poster. Then, about 3 weeks ago while driving back from golf one day we saw a man talking to a very large gathering of people in a tent-like public area with lights. I was told that he was running for a seat Parliament and therefore he was speaking to the people - just like a stop on the campaign trail in America.

 But, although the campaign process is somewhat similar to the American process, the system of voting is quite different. For one thing, the reason that there is a new election for Parliament is because the people of Jordan were seemingly not happy with the Parliament and therefore a new Parliament was wanted. So, some 700 people ran on Tuesday for 120 seats on Parliament. Even some family members of kids in the King's community ran! This year was different than previous elections in Jordan though, because in the past most people voted for the person running from their tribe. Because Jordan was originally a tribal culture, it is very focused on family. So if someone from your family was running you had to vote for them - even if they may not have been the best candidate. But now Jordan has broken out of that box and people are more free to vote for whomever they want, although you must be inside of Jordan to vote because there are no absentee ballots.

 However, 2 political parties boycotted the Parliamentary elections because they felt that they were merely charades and that they didn't really control anything, and only 30% of people who are eligible actually voted. This is the main difference between the American elections and Jordanian elections. Here there is not much passion or fire behind the campaign trail and the notion of everyone voting and therefore having a say in their country. But, since 70% of the Jordanian population is under the age of 20 perhaps the notion of voting will change over the next several years.

 The date that was picked for the Election Day was also a strategic move by the Jordanian government. Tuesday was the 5th anniversary of the Amman bombings, so the government wanted to try and replace the thoughts of that with election day.

 I will try to blog from Paris, and I hope all is well back on the home front!

Kat