Funny snapshots from Jordan's parliamentary election

Till now, the Ministry of Interior Affairs refuses officially to post all the number of votes that losers in the last election got. Security and order concerns might have compelled the Ministry to do so, as well as the "save face" concept. A cultural concept that is well-established in our tribal society where winners do not brag about their victory and give a space to losers to gather their pride again in the eye of the public.

However and according to Alquds Alarabi, there has been a leak aboutthe number of votes that losing candidates gained in the last election and some of the results are really funny.
Take for example Mohamed Alqaran who had 0 votes. Another word, the guy did not vote for himself! We had a similar experience in the municipality election but the candidate was a woman and she did not need any votes to be elected according to the quota system. So what Mr. Qaran was thinking? I mean one can write a PH dissertation in psychology to explore why would someone run to the election and refuse to vote for himself.
Other results are puzzling as well and need to be studied by sociologists whom by the way might need help themselves to understand the complicated Jordanian culture. Take for example Dr. Sari Naser; a well known sociologist and well known author. Dr. Naser received only 125 votes. Well, may be Dr. Naser should have known better our society by now. That could be another book to publish Dr. Naser.
On the celebrity side, Aroub Soboh; a young beautiful TV host, who is well known in Jordan and the Arab World for her children TV shows. Unfortunately, Aroub did not get more than 250 votes. Too bad children can't vote; otherwise, Aroub could have been our new Prime Minister. And finally, Naser Ghandour, the previous gallkeeper of Al-Wihdat club and the National Soccer team. Ghandour had 259 people voting for him. Unfortunately, the huge popularity of Wihdad club did not help much. May be he should have run when Al-Wihdat club was preforming better in the National League. Anyway, there is no such thing as losing. To all the losers out there. The bottom line is this. If you spent a lot of money, your labor is not in vain and you helped distributing the wealth equally in the Jordanian society. If you did not spend any money, you did not really lose.

Jordan's Parliament Election: Lessons and implications

The election is over and the major two lessons for the day are "It is the "TRIBE" stupids," and the golden days of the IAF might be over. The Islamic Action Front (IAF); the political wing of Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood, which had 17 seats in the previous parliament lost 11 seats as only 8 out of the 22 IAF candidates succeeded to win a seat this time. The IAF was fielding 22 candidates, including one woman in the elections and was hoping to win most if not all of these seats. As expected, the IAF issued a statement blaming irregularities in the election and the government for its astounding defeat; however most observers believe that the election was fair and smooth this time.

The truth is that I have never been a big fan of the (IAF),and part of me is thrilled for its astounding defeat, but may be it is time now to rethink and renovate Jordan's electoral system. Currently, most of the seats in parliament come from constituencies in rural tribal areas, not from the cities where most Jordanians live, meaning that the tribal districts are over-represented. Most lawmakers elected in a rural constituency such as Ex-prime minister Rawabdeh with only 2,000 to 3,000 voters to win, while each member of parliament from the capital represents about 95,000.

One of the best option about renovating the system comes from the director of the Amman-based al-Quds Center for Political Studies Oraib al-Rantawi, who advocates a mixed system, combining district-based constituencies with party- or coalition-based proportional representation. These structural changes might be what we need to strengthen Jordan's political parties and help invigorate its civil life. At this last election, candidates did not bother to join political party or to come up with an agenda because if the tribe is your shortcut to the parliament, why the hell would anybody care.

On the bright side, good news came from Madaba yesterday, where former MP Falak Jamaani claimed victory after getting 3,301 votes to be the first woman to win a Lower House seat without resorting to the women’s quota since 1989. Good for her and us.

Hamas' era of rule and justice

The news from Gaza is heading from bad to worse(watch vedio). A rally by the rival Fatah movement commemorating Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat ended tragically when Hamas security forces opened fire on the crowd. Six Palestinian people were killed and hundreds were injured. Hamas which would typically revenge for the death of the Palestinian martyrs on the hand of the Israelis acted differently this time as its officials accused Fatah movement of provoking the violence for not submitting to Hamas' regulation of barring large public gatherings.
Apparently, protesting is a violent act according to Hamas' dictionary while suicide bombing is not! Surely, we live in interesting time watching the unfolding of the new era of justice and Islamic rule which finally has arrived to Gaza.