With the movement of modernizing and licensing it. Are Jordanian parties emerging from the crisis of elite rotation and their weak political influence?

AMMAN — The input to the Jordanian political process for months has been strongly reviving the concept of reproducing and recycling elites, which, according to political observers, promises to stagnate in the place that Jordanian party life has remained since the overthrow of the first elected parliamentary government nearly 67 years ago.

Recently, a remarkable partisan movement has been active in the Kingdom after the new Parties Law, No. 7 of 2022, set a deadline of May 15 to correct the status of existing parties and complete the licensing of new parties.

The new law, after being approved by parliament, stipulates that the number of founding members of the party at the time of its founding conference should not be less than one thousand people, representing at least 6 governorates, with a minimum of 30 members from each governorate.

The Independent Election Commission talked about an unstable party map until the deadline for correcting the situation of the parties in mid-May (Anatolia)

Unstable map

According to the Independent Election Commission, 12 parties have been rectified and their licenses renewed, in addition to licensing one new party, according to conditions approved by the Royal Committee for the Modernization of the Political System.

The official spokesman for the Commission Mohammed Khair Rawashdeh – Al Jazeera Net – that 3 parties took the status of "under establishment" and there are two requests to establish two new parties.

According to al-Rawashda, the commission is studying the applications of 19 existing parties to reconcile their status with the law, which stipulates that the 56 existing parties must meet several conditions, the most important of which are: the membership of one thousand members, including 20% women and 20% youth under the age of 35, and that these represent 6 governorates out of 12 governorates.

The party map, according to the independent commission, will not be stable before mid-May, the last period under the provisions of the Parties Law in force, which considered parties licensed under the previous law as dissolved until their situation is corrected.

Despite the remarkable turnout of parties to correct their situation, opinion polls reveal the reluctance of Jordanians to join parties. Nidal Batayneh, secretary-general of the "new" Erada party, attributed this to "an old legacy, which is not commensurate with the size of the political ambition of the stage."

A partisan breakthrough but.

Political researcher Dr. Abdullah Al-Tawalbeh reviews the most prominent deep reasons for the stagnation of party life in the "individualism" box, explaining that since the call of the "People's" Party in 1927 to form an elected parliament and a parliamentary government, and the subsequent formation of leftist, Islamic and nationalist parties until today, "parties have remained hostage to one personality, and have not come out of the cloak of individualism."

Party life witnessed a boom in the mid-fifties of the last century, and with the expansion of the nationalist tide, culminating in the formation of the first partisan parliamentary government headed by Suleiman Nabulsi, in October 1956.

The Palestinian organizations, which were active on the scene during the sixties and seventies, added a political momentum to party activity, but it declined strongly, following the armed clash between the Jordanian army and the Palestinian organizations, especially the events of "Black September" in 1970.

In the wake of these events, the Jordanian government resorted to banning party life, with the exception of the Muslim Brotherhood Association, who were allowed to practice partisan work.

In the summer of 2021, King Abdullah II took the initiative to form a committee to modernize the political system and entrusted it to former Prime Minister Samir al-Rifai, whose recommendations included the preparation of two draft new laws for elections and political parties.

Some fear the displacement of leftist or nationalist opposition ideologies in the campaign to modernize parties (French)

Reproduction of elites

Governing circles insist that programmatic parties be the sole tool for deliberating the formation of parliamentary governments, which explains the emergence of new parties in the last two years. But the political elites understand the state's attempt to organize party work to establish "the existence of 3 strong parties" based on the late King Hussein bin Talal's dictum that "congestion hinders movement."

In this context, there are fears of the displacement of ideological and opposition parties, such as leftist and nationalist, as they do not meet the requirements of the stage, and have failed to achieve any political presence in parliament or political life, and have been confined to events similar to political salons, and ended up in empty headquarters that depend on government support.

Only 20,<> partisans

Official statistics speak of only about 20,50 citizens belonging to more than <> parties. "We are still repeating ourselves and revolving in one circle, parties based on certain people whom the Jordanian people do not trust, and even see them as the basis of the disease, so how will they come up with medicine?"

Al-Tawalbeh, like other Jordanians, watched "the emergence of people who have no experience in political work, and no known political history, and who have become leaders of parties and hundreds rally around them, motivated by their interests and not by defending the interests of a particular group."

He sees what is happening as "nothing more than a distortion of real party work", predicting that many of today's parties will end "to what the first ones have concluded". But he believes that the way to survive requires "Jordan's transformation from the current partisanship to partisan and intellectual currents, as happened in France."

Opinion polls: Only 2% of Jordanians consider joining parties (French)

Not interested in politics

According to a study conducted by the Center for Strategic Studies in Jordan in August 2022, only 2% of the sample are considering joining political parties, while 94% do not follow any party activities, and 51% do not expect the success of party life.

The same center prepared a study on the political participation of university students on March 20, 2022, and its most prominent results include that about a quarter of students (23%) are interested in politics (to varying degrees) and (77%) are not interested, in addition to that more than two-thirds of students (78%) believe that the practice of political action by parties has not been successful.

Nidal Batayneh, secretary-general of the Irada party, who toured Jordan promoting his party, responds, "Today is not yesterday," linking people's reluctance to the convictions of parents and their archives of old experiences.

Batayneh says to Al Jazeera Net, "Out of 4800 members of the party, there are 38% under the age of 35, which dispels the cloud of alleged fear, calling on all official institutions to engage in the battle to root awareness and institutionalize the culture of party life in societies.

Parties do not emerge in political salons or from the velvet class, as Batayneh explains, but start from the people and in the constant clash with their interests and issues, and that partisanship may be a solution to face internal and external pressures.

However, the head of the Center for Middle East Studies, Dr. Jawad Al-Hamad, does not see fundamental differences between the current partisan wave and its predecessors, given the many turns that party life has gone through. Party life had not yet stabilized.

He believes that the existing parties are not based on strategic visions for the future of the country and its directions, but only focus on micro issues.

Wave and different law

Political analyst Nizam Barakat has another opinion that the current wave differs from its predecessors, especially the partisan idea of the elites, in addition to the party list, which will win 41 parliamentary seats.

What is important – for Barakat – is the new law, which stipulates the threshold (exceeding the threshold) for any party, as a condition for obtaining financial allocations and entering the field of competition.

Asked if there is a turnout for parties, Barakat Al Jazeera Net answers that "fear still dominates the behavior of the public, but also students," as well as that the parties today are "parties of people, their heads sit on the chair and do not change with time, with the exception of the Islamic Action Front, which changed its leadership through internal elections and produced new leaders."