The Jordan's king calls early elections

Continuing the "arabic spring", now we'll have another early elections. This time it will be in Jordan.

It's the fifth Prime Minister that the King Abdullah will appoint since the beggining of the protests and the tension is rising fastly.

The move was announced on the eve of what had been billed as a potentially violent confrontation between the Islamist-led opposition and government supporters at rival rallies in Amman on Friday.

Late on Thursday the pro-government side decided to postpone its rally, apparently on official advice. Opposition supporters had accused the authorities of deliberately organising a showdown.

The Islamic Action Front (IFA), the Jordanian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, is expecting to get 50,000 supporters out for the biggest opposition protest yet seen in the western-backed monarchy.

It's important to say that the Muslim Brotherhood is the largest opposition in the government. This is the same political group which had a prominent role in Egypt and Tunisia. But the unusual thing was the government has allowed demonstrations to take place without the use of lethal force, what didn't happen in other arabic countries.

The IAF has insisted that it will boycott the polls to protest against the lack of reform. It is demanding a parliamentary system where the prime minister is elected rather than chosen and dismissed by the king.

Under Jordan's constitution the cabinet must resign within a week of parliament's dissolution. Changes to the electoral system have failed to satisfy critics, who complain that it remains unrepresentative and weighted against the estimated 60% of Jordanians who are of Palestinian origin.

A study by Fikra, an online forum that aims to support Arab democrats in what they called "the struggle with authoritarians", shows that the governate of Kerak, which has a population of 200,000, is represented by 10 MPs, while the 1 million people in Zarqa are represented by only 11 MPs. This unfair distribution of seats between governorates prevents hundreds of thousands from participating in the election.

The last prime minister, Awn Khasawneh, resigned when the palace insisted he was moving too slowly this reform process, but there are others hipothesis for his destitution.In private, Jordan's western allied are becoming increasingly nervous about the slow pace of change and the omission of the palace in the face of opposition. Expectations of change have risen as criticism of the monarchy has become bolder. 

The arabic world will never be the same...