Abdullah taps chief of staff as Jordan’s new PM after Islamists gain in elections
King selects Harvard-educated technocrat Jafar Hassan to lead new government, week after Muslim Brotherhood becomes largest party in parliament with 31 out of 138 seats
Jordan’s King Abdullah II on Sunday nominated his chief of staff, Jafar Hassan, to be the new prime minister, the royal palace said, charging him with forming a government following last Tuesday’s parliamentary elections.
The outgoing premier, Bisher Khasawneh, submitted his resignation to the king earlier on Sunday. He will stay on in a caretaker capacity until the formation of a new cabinet.
Under the kingdom’s constitution, the government usually resigns after legislative elections. It is the king who appoints the prime minister, not parliament, which has limited powers.
In a letter published by the palace, King Abdullah called on Hassan to “mobilize all efforts to support the steadfastness of our Palestinian brothers” in Gaza, the West Bank and “Holy Jerusalem,” amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Hamas terror group.
He also called on the premier-designate to “work with all our energy through Arab and international movements to protect the Palestinian people, and stop the attacks and blatant violations of humanitarian principles and international law.”
In Tuesday’s election, Jordan’s leading Islamist party, the Islamic Action Front, became the largest in parliament, winning 31 out of the 138 seats.
Jordan’s parliament is bicameral. In addition to the elected parliament, there is also a senate with 69 members appointed by the monarch.
The IAF is a political offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, and the result gives the Islamists their largest representation since 1989.
With a low turnout of 32 percent, the party’s success came with voters frustrated about economic woes and the Israel-Hamas war.
Jordan in 1994 signed a peace treaty with Israel, becoming only the second Arab state to do so, after Egypt. But regular protests have called for the treaty’s dissolution since the war erupted last October, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.
Nearly half of Jordan’s population is of Palestinian origin.
Harvard-educated Hassan, a widely respected technocrat, will face the challenges of mitigating the impact of the nearby war on the kingdom’s economy, hard-hit by curbs on investment and a sharp drop in tourism.
In the first quarter of 2024, the unemployment rate was 21 percent.
The outgoing prime minister had sought to drive reforms pushed by King Abdullah to help reverse a decade of sluggish growth, hovering at around 2%, that was worsened by the pandemic and conflict in neighboring Iraq and Syria.
The traditional conservative establishment had long been blamed for obstructing a modernization drive advocated by the Western-leaning monarch, fearing liberal reforms would erode their grip on power.
Politicians say a key task ahead is accelerating IMF-guided reforms and reining in more than $50 billion in public debt, in a country supported by billions of dollars of foreign aid from Western donors.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
