AMMAN: The switch of control after 26 years of Brotherhood dominance of the union follows a series of losses, including control of the main teachers union and a poor showing in the student council elections.
The Muslim Brotherhood has lost control of one of Jordan’s largest labor unions in the latest blow to the movement.
Members of the powerful Engineers Union voted for a coalition of Arab nationalists, liberals and independents instead of the Islamist list, according to the final results announced early on Saturday.
The switch of control after 26 years of Brotherhood dominance of the union follows a series of losses, including control of the main teachers union and a poor showing in the student council elections. It comes two days after Zaki Bani Irshid, a controversial senior figure in the Muslim Brotherhood, lost the leadership fight in the Islamic Action Committee, the movement’s political arm in Jordan.
Mohammad Hussayni, director of the Amman-based Hawiya (Identity) Center, told Arab News that the loss of the Engineers Union reflected the Islamists’ internal problems.
“They have been having some big internal problems and splits which have a clear reflection on their abilities to mobilize,” he said.
The Muslim Brotherhood has dominated politics and unions in Jordan for decades, where it was tolerated by the monarchy and in some cases members of Parliament served in the Cabinet.
Relations with the group deteriorated after an extremist attack on hotels in Amman in 2005 and the rise to senior positions within the movement of Irshid, a hard-liner within the group.
Things became more tense after the Arab Spring as Islamist groups in neighboring countries rose to power on the back of the chaos. In 2016, the government banned the Brotherhood and licensed another branch of the movement under a different leadership.
Lamis Andoni, a veteran Jordanian columnist and a long-time observer of Jordanian professional unions, told Arab News that the results could be the beginning of a new era.
“It reflects the end of the domination of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, which had a huge political and professional effect on local politics for years,” she said.
The importance of the union result is that it reflects a change in all governorates in Jordan and not just the capital Amman, Andoni said. The Brotherhood have traditionally performed strongest in the many conservative regional governorates.
The union results showed that the Numou (growth) list captured seven out of the ten seats, winning decisively in all major governorates including the capital. Bashar Tarawneh, a member of Numou, told Arab News that the success of the movement had to do with increasing voter participation, especially among the youth.
“We took it upon ourselves to visit every governorate in Jordan and we encouraged everyone to vote in these elections,” he said.
More than 14,000 union members voted in the election — 3,000 more than in previous rounds, Tarawneh said. Khaled Ramadan, a member of the Jordanian Parliament and a union activist, told Arab News that the change did not necessarily reflect a retraction of the Muslim Brotherhood but more that the Numou movement has energized young members on a national basis.
“Look at the number of votes that the Islamists received this round and in previous rounds and you will see that the level of their support hasn’t changed.”
Zeid Nabulsi, an Amman-based lawyer, said the result showed that the silent majority had woken up in Jordan.
He said that this was due to both the declining fortunes of Islamist groups in countries such as Egypt and Syria and the impact of the digital revolution on young people “which has exposed the Islamists for their real motives.”
Nabulsi, however, argued that Islamists were still a powerful political force in Jordan, particularly in their stronghold of Zarqa.
He warned that activists should not let up in their struggle against what he called “the forces of darkness.”
