The outcome of the November 9th election produced few surprises, largely because of the newly amended electoral law. The new law, like the previous one, discriminates in favour of rural areas, which has in the past resulted in a legislature dominated by loyal, but economically conservative, members of parliament (MPs). The amended law, released in May, does not revert to a more proportional system. Like the old law, it keeps in place the single non-transferable vote (known locally as "one person, one vote") formula that the opposition parties insist favours tribal candidates over the parties. It included clauses intended to allay opposition concerns, including increasing the number of seats in the elected lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, from 110 to 120, and allocating four new seats to the cities of Amman (the capital), Zarqa and Irbid. The leading opposition party, the Islamic Action Front (IAF), might have benefited from an increased seat quota in Zarqa, a city that has traditionally been a stronghold for them, but boycotted the election in November, citing the government's gerrymandering of electoral districts. The IAF's fortunes have been hindered recently by worsening internal splits between moderates and hardliners-the latter are seeking to align the group more closely with Hamas, a militant Palestinian movement. However, the IAF secretary-general, Hamzah Mansour, did present a united front during the January protests, in which he played a prominent role.

The king will be wary of fundamentally altering the balance of power in the country at his expense, and will seek to quell any large-scale influx of ethnic Palestinians into sensitive organs of the state. The new parliament looks very similar to the previous one. The lower house is dominated by loyalist and tribally oriented members, and as such will probably fail to meet the political aspirations of the increasingly educated and sophisticated electorate in Jordan's major cities. For these reasons demonstrators in January called for parliament to be dissolved and fresh elections to be called under a revised election law.