The Muslim Brotherhood and Tomorrow's Jordanian Municipal Elections

By David Schenker

Tomorrow, Jordanians go to the polls for municipal elections. The Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood’s political party—the Islamic Action Front (IAF)—boycotted the last local elections in 2003, but will participate tomorrow. The local elections are a tune-up for the November parliamentary elections in Jordan. In this regard, IAF performance tomorrow will be a harbinger of what’s to come in November.

Given regional trends--Hamas’ Gaza takeover a little more than a month ago, and last week’s landslide victory for the Islamist-leaning Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the Turkish national elections--these elections will be important to watch.

I have a longer article on the significance of these elections titled “Jordan's Islamists and Municipal Elections: Confirmation of a Problematic Trend?” published by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

In a related development, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas gave a press conference last week where he said he would be working on changing the Palestinian Election Law, eliminating the two vote system (one constituency vote, one national vote) in favor of a one-man one-vote system. Hamas’ 2006 landslide victory in the Palestinian parliamentary elections was largely attributable to this law.

If Abbas succeeds in changing the law, the Palestinian Elections Law will look more like Jordan's. The Jordanian law was first adopted by King Hussein to limit Islamist success at the ballot box. It worked, so much so that in 2001 Salem Falahat, who now serves as secretary general of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood, described this voting policy as a “black flag in the history of Jordanian democracy.” The IAF is still trying to convince King Abdullah to change the law, which they describe as "undemocratic."

The Muslim Brotherhood posted an article expressing concern about this prospective change in the Palestinian law on its website last week.

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