La représentation des villes au parlement jordanien

Abstract

Hussein Abu Roumman analyses the results of the parliamentary elections of 2003 and 2007 to highlight the positive discrimination that favoured rural and Bedouin regions at the expense of urban areas, the consequence being that the three main Jordanian cities of Amman, Zarqa and Irbid are the least represented in parliament. The reason is that these cities have a high concentration of Palestinians who support the main opposition party: the Islamic Action Front. Senior representatives of the Jordanian state put forward economic arguments concerning the level of development to justify the overrepresentation of rural areas. Hussein Abu Rumman reminds us that on the eve of the 1997 elections, the late King Hussein Bin Talal stated that in order to resolve the Palestinian question, Jordan had to find a balance between allowing Jordanian Palestinians to exercise their rights as citizens and the desire not to renounce their right to return.The author analyzes voting systems, and regrets that some voters vote in their constituency of origin and not in their place of residence, thus preventing them from developing political ties with their place of residence and transforming towns into “hotels”. The failure to impose the registration of voters on the electoral lists of their circumscription of residence is an obstacle to the development of urban social relations and citizenship among the people of the same constituency. The author then discusses the various electoral systems that could be implemented to strengthen citizenship.