- AMMAN: At least 25 people, including a candidate, have been referred by the security authorities to the public prosecutor following vote buying charges, judicial sources said Friday.
All suspects belong to one of Amman’s election constituencies, they added.
It was the first case of a running candidate being charged with vote buying, a phenomenon that was rampant in the 2007 polls.
If condemned, the suspects could be sentenced to seven years in jail, in accordance with a new amendment to the election law, the judicial sources said.
The move apparently came after concerns expressed on Thursday by the state-funded National Centre for Human Rights (NCHR), which reported new methods of election fraud that jeopardized the fairness of the Tuesday polls.
The elections are boycotted by the country’s main opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood movement and its political arm, the Islamic Action Front (IAF), which accused the government of failure to provide adequate assurances that no ”rigging” would take place this year as happened in 2007.