In Jordan, Coalition Unites for Electoral Reform

In Jordan, Coalition Unites for Electoral Reform [1]

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Responding to calls for electoral reform from civil society organizations in Jordan, a national grassroots coalition led by the National Center for Human Rights (NCHR) has launched a first-of-its-kind media and advocacy campaign to push for improvements in the country's election system.

Over the past year, NCHR partnered with NDI to build the coalition, which is made up of more than 200 grassroots organizations and is the largest civil society coalition in Jordan. Following a year-long research and consensus-building process, the coalition issued 18 recommendations for reforming Jordan's electoral law, which it submitted to the Prime Minister.

Highlights of the recommendations put forward by the NCHR coalition for electoral reform:

Amend the one-person one-vote system (single-non-transferable vote system) and replace it with a mixed electoral system.
Reconsider the districting system and redesign it to guarantee equality among the different districts in terms of population, size, distance from the capital and development needs.
Establish a permanent and independent national commission to supervise the electoral process.
Increase the women's quota for elected officials.
Enhance the secret ballot by setting certain standards for the shape of the voting booth and improve the ballot to include the candidate's name and picture and a symbol indicating him/her for illiterate voters.
Strengthen regulation of registration process to prevent those who attempt to vote in multiple districts or to register in districts other than where they reside.
Eliminate voter lists that use the whole district as one unit and replace them with separate voter lists for polling individual centers.
Set the required legal regulations to ensure fairness among candidates and protect voters' will by enhancing and intensifying penalties on electoral crimes.
Eliminate any payment MPs receive other than their remuneration provided by the law.
Consider a first university degree as a minimum educational requirement for running for parliamentary elections.
Abide by Article 75/1/e of the Constitution, which gives the right to run in parliamentary elections to whomever was sentenced to a term of imprisonment exceeding one year for a non-political offense and has been pardoned.
Specify voting age by giving the right to vote to anyone who has turned 18.
Enable voters who are outside the Kingdom to vote.
Maintain the process of counting the votes inside polling stations and announcing results immediately after counting votes in all ballot boxes in a polling center.
Publicize voter lists electronically and through other publishing means.
Allow civil society organizations to monitor the electoral process without any obstacles and in coordination with the national higher election committee.

If the government decides to move forward with electoral reform, which the Prime Minister has said could happen as soon as April, the Ministry of Interior would issue a new, temporary law on elections. According to the Jordanian constitution, the Ministry of Interior can pass temporary legislation — pending the King's approval — when the parliament is not in session or has been dissolved, as is now the case. The new temporary law would replace the current law.

The NCHR coalition is hopeful that the new law will incorporate civil society's recommendations.

Though parliamentary and municipal elections are held in Jordan at regular intervals, international organizations and Jordanian citizen groups have criticized the electoral process for lacking an independent election commission, failing to include women fully in the political process, and an absence of regulations restricting individuals from voting multiple times in different districts or temporarily registering and voting in districts where they are not residents.

Above all, the NCHR coalition is critical of Jordan's use of the single-non-transferable vote (SNTV) system, also known as a "one-person one-vote," where each citizen can cast only one vote for one candidate in districts where there are multiple seats to be filled. The SNTV system makes it difficult for some political parties or minority candidates to win seats, favoring instead community "strong men" who are already likely to win.

In an effort to deal with these problems, the coalition is offering its recommendations for electoral reform, which include establishing an independent election commission, replacing the SNTV system with a more representative system that gives more strength to political parties and minority candidates, and increasing the quota for women parliamentarians from six to 12 seats.

With King Abdullah's decision last November to dissolve the parliament and call for early elections sometime this year, NCHR's campaign comes at an especially critical time. With high participation in the advocacy campaign and positive media coverage, it appears that the recommendations have been well received by the Jordanian public.

The advocacy campaign was kicked off in January to educate the Jordanian public about the recommendations and to prompt ordinary citizens to join the effort to get them enacted.

By using a blend of strategies, such as online forums, e-discussions and distribution of campaign materials through grassroots networks, the campaign is setting a new Jordanian standard for reach and inclusiveness of grassroots advocacy. NCHR has developed five newspaper ads, three TV spots and a radio public service announcement that are airing in the national media. The campaign also designed other materials – 2,500 posters, 10,000 brochures and 1,000 calendars – that are being distributed around the country through its network of community groups.

During the first week of January NCHR team members traveled to and worked to engage groups in Wadi Rum, Aqaba and Karak by distributing campaign posters and leaflets and urging people at the grassroots to participate in on-line discussion forums.

In addition to media and face-to-face efforts, the campaign has a strong presence on the Internet. The campaign has a website [3] and Facebook group [4] whose membership of more than 800 individuals grows daily. This is coupled with an aggressive email outreach strategy that has reached over 160,000 Jordanians.

Prior to issuing the recommendations and launching the campaign, NCHR, in partnership with NDI, conducted 12 workshops and three regional conferences over the past six months. More than 500 participants from grassroots organizations, political parties, government and media contributed suggestions, opinions and advice on ways to improve voting and elections in the country, which was compiled to become the coalition's 18 recommendations for electoral reform.

Pictured above:A poster from the campaign encouraging the establishment of an independent agency for administering and supervising elections.

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Published on March 3, 2010