The Islamic Action Front’s (IAF)  Shura Council decided to boycott Jordan's November 9 general elections, citing lack of government guarantees to ensure a fair poll, IAF official Hammam Said told AFP on Friday.

"There will be no independent body to monitor the elections, and we are not optimistic that the government will carry out some reforms and manage the process properly,”

The IAF said the council's decision was "binding."

“After fraud and vote buying in municipal and parliamentary elections in 2007, boycotting this year's poll is the right thing to do," said Bani Rsheid, a senior member of the IAF's executive committee.

The Islamists have complained that a new electoral law which Jordan endorsed in May was "targeting" them, after maintaining a controversial 1998 one-person-one-vote system, which critics say empowers pro-government hopefuls.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II dissolved the parliament in November 2009 and called an election two years early, after several months of press criticism of the ineffectiveness and, in some cases, alleged corruption of MPs.

It was the second time the king has dissolved parliament early since he rose to the throne in 1999.

-AFP/ NOW Lebanon