Jordan: Good at voting, bad at counting

Jordan’s Independent Electoral Committee [IEC] should admit to its part in ruining the great opportunity of the January 23 election. Jordanians got out of their beds early on that sunny day. They marched to the ballot boxes to cast their vote for the country’s 17th House of Representatives, firm in their belief that their votes would overcome the problems that have beset their predecessors. Recounting what went on after the ballot boxes were sealed and all the excitement surrounding the unexpected triumph of the national turnout, you can’t help lamenting the misfortune of it all. The government -- and most political blocs taking part -- had a field day celebrating the electoral triumph. Credit for that goes not to the media rhetoric and propaganda, but to the widespread sense amongst the population that the election was critical in finally curbing the problems of the past. Then the time came for the vote-count. The IEC, having promised us all that preliminary results would be released two hours in, promptly disappeared from view. Journalists and television reporters were left for hours at the Royal Cultural Centre, while the general public remained transfixed, waiting for someone to appear to tell them what was going on. Memories of past events probably got everyone to thinking that a scandal lay behind every minute of delay in the results’ release. Questions were posed on social media channels, and suggestions of shady clandestine arrangements were rife. Only at dawn did the IEC wake up from its slumber to announce that its assessment of the count’s timeframe had been inaccurate. The electoral body realised it still had two boxes to count -- the horror! -- one for lists and another for the local constituencies. Apparently this was behind the delay, which continued right the way through Thursday. Arriving on the scene, the first problem the IEC had to deal with was in the Balqa First Constituency, where the local polling committee admitted three voter registers were missing after the bag they had been kept in went missing. Enter the IEC’s Deputy Chairman. The former human rights activists reached out to the candidates affected and proposed an “informal resolution.” Instead of a legal intervention, the IEC’s informal resolution just proved the same old mentality in dealing with these kinds of concerns had reappeared. What was the response? A pat on the back and a neglect of legal procedures: “Never mind. Let it go this one time, you’ve got a whole career ahead of you.” This was said to one candidate who’d been publicly impinged on by the state across a series of elections covering a whole decade. The IEC should be held responsible for all the repercussions that follow, in the wake of such obvious failures throughout the vote-counting process. The IEC should also be held responsible for the ultimate failure of the Jordanian people’s January 23 electoral revolution, when the people took part to affect change and silence the naysayers once and for all. The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arabstoday.