Jordan is facing new political uncertainty after King Abdullah decided to dissolve parliament and call early elections against a background of rising tensions over long-delayed reforms.
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, 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.
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.
"We are talking about a new phase after 20 months of continued popular protests and unwillingness to listen to our demands for reform," Zaki Bani Rusheid, the deputy head of the Muslim Brotherhood, told Reuters. "We are calling for real reforms that restore power to Jordanian people."
Under Jordan's constitution the cabinet must resign within a week of parliament's dissolution. That means the king will be appointing another prime minister – his fifth since the Arab spring began. Jordanians joke wryly about the king playing musical chairs but doing little else.
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 their 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.
Jordan has been largely spared the drama of events elsewhere in the region over the past two turbulent years. Demonstrations in March 2011 were contained and protests since have been restricted to outlying areas. Unusually for the Arab world, the government has allowed demonstrations to take place without the use of lethal force.
Talk of reform has now been accompanied by four changes of prime minister. The last prime minister, Awn Khasawneh, resigned when the palace insisted he was moving too slowly. The other view is that he was getting too cosy in talks with the IAF. The outgoing incumbent, Fayez Tarawneh, was only ever seen as a stopgap.
The IAF has been emboldened by the successes of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Tunisia and by the prominent role it is playing in the uprising in Syria.
In private, Jordan's western friends are becoming increasingly nervous about the slow pace of change and the prickliness of the palace in the face of opposition. Expectations of change have risen as criticism of the monarchy has become bolder. The king has also been having unaccustomed problems with his most loyal constituency, the east Jordanian tribes, as the cash to pay for public sector jobs runs out.