Polls open in Jordan's parliamentary election clouded by Gaza war

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi

AMMAN (Reuters) -Polls opened on Tuesday in Jordan's first parliamentary election under a new law meant to dilute the outsized impact of tribalism and bolster political parties, with Islamists expected to gain support due to anger over Israel's war in Gaza.

The 2022 electoral law is designed to pave the way for political parties to play a bigger role, though the election is still expected to keep the 138-seat parliament in the hands of tribal and pro-government factions.

The new law for the first time directly allocates 41 seats for over 30 licensed and mostly pro-government parties. It also raised the quota for women's representation to 18 from 15 seats and lowered the age for elected deputies to 25 from 30.

Jordan retains a voting system that favours sparsely populated tribal and provincial regions over the densely populated cities mostly inhabited by Jordanians of Palestinian descent, which are Islamist strongholds and highly politicised.

More than two thirds of Jordanians live in cities but are allocated less than a third of assembly seats.

Turnout, which was 29% in the last election in 2020, is traditionally stronger in rural and tribal areas where it reaches as high as 80% in voting based on family allegiances.

Voting by mainly urban Palestinians, who form a large part of the population, was particularly low in the last election, averaging 10 percent in the capital Amman.

Still, officials say this election is a milestone in a gradual democratisation process and should bolster turnout.

"There should be more people participating because of the political lists especially in the cities of Amman and Zarqa," Musa Maaytah, chairman of the Independent Election Commission that administers the vote, told Reuters.

Many Jordanians say a passive parliament packed with pro-government deputies is powerless to bring change.

"People have lost trust. Whom do I vote for? Those trampled on even before they enter parliament? Decisions are not in their hands, they are just chess pieces," said Ibrahim Jamal, an Amman shopkeeper.

Officials say King Abdullah’s decision to go ahead with the vote was a message that politics is continuing as normal despite the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, which has clouded Jordan's economic and political outlook.

In a country where anti-Israel sentiment runs high, the war is expected to buoy the electoral fortunes of the Islamists, Jordan's largest opposition bloc, who have led some of the region's biggest rallies backing the Palestinian militant Hamas group, their ideological allies.

The Islamic Action Front aims to win enough seats to help reverse unpopular economic policies, stand up to laws curbing public freedoms and oppose further normalisation with Israel, with which Jordan has a 1994 peace treaty.

(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; editing by Michael Perry and Mark Heinrich)