Democracy in Jordan?

by Toujan Faisal and Ian Urbina

(AMMAN, Jordan) When Washington cites examples of the potential for reform and democracy in the Arab world, Jordan is one of the first countries mentioned. For the first time since 1997, Jordanians went to the polls last month to vote for parliament, and by most accounts the elections went smoothly. Voter turnout topped 52% and stability was maintained, with a clear majority of the seats going to pro-government candidates. Islamists, though they later questioned the outcome, added credibility to the process by taking part in the elections rather than boycotting them. In the end they captured only 17 out of 110 seats, far fewer than expected. Jordanian women took a step forward, with six parliamentary spots specially set aside for females.

These were important developments, but Jordan is still a long way off from embracing true democratic reform.

In June 2001, when the prime minister disbanded the last parliament, he hijacked the legislative process and began governing by fiat. He put politics and dissent on a short leash and refashioned the electoral process so that it would be far from representative. Consequently, although Jordan has finally returned its parliament to session, the country is in many ways further away from being a functioning democracy than it was two years ago.

At the heart of the problem are the "temporary laws" the Jordanian government has decreed over the last two years at dizzying speed. These laws are constitutionally permitted only when parliament is not in session and the "essential security needs" of the nation demand them. By disbanding the parliament and putting the country into a sustained state of high alert, the present government opened the way for unfettered drafting of these laws. Between 1930 and 1999, only 60 such temporary laws were decreed. In the last two years, the government has implemented 184.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=3868

But as stated, more progress is needed. Anyway, it seems like Israel is not the only state denying equal rights to the Palestinians...

Maybe you could point out where in the article that Jordan treats the 60% of its population that is Palestinian any different than the rest? I didn't spot that bit...

"The north and central voting districts, where the bulk of the Palestinian population resides, are sorely underrepresented."

And to be something that deprives 60% of the population of equal rights, it's gotta be the humdinger of all gerrymanders. Of course the argument could get used that if they've got the right to vote, then people have got equal rights, but I don't tend to think that way about things....

Violet....

Many Israelis do indeed prevent the Palestinians from voting, and do infringe upon their rights, but they are not the only ones to do so.

but also heard that U.S. involvement in the region, meaning the attack on Iraq, could very well derail this process. Jordanians strongly oppose the actions of the U.S. and many have taken up arms to fight alongside their fellow Arabs. There is a lot of anger directed at the U.S. right now and it would be a shame if this destabilized their government, as well. Important post!:-)

I don't really see the US as being a *real* democracy either, and I think gerrymandering is one of those things that also happens in well-established democracies...

I'm interested to know whether people think that constitutional monarchies (which is what Jordan is) are democracies...

I think seeing the elections were held last month and Jordanian anger at the US has been around longer than that, that if the parliament the Jordanian people elected is allowed to govern without interference from Abdullah, there may be less anger from the people, who I thought were pretty pissed off about how Abdullah whores himself to the US and it's interests rather than looking out for the interests of Jordan and it's people...

Anyway, Jordan is doing better than us when it comes to women in parliament. We don't have parliamentary seats set aside for women, and considering the very low ratio of women to men in some state parliaments here, maybe it's something that should be done a bit more...

Cheers...

Violet...

Just curious...

which is a somewhat different form of government than a Democracy.

a republic can be a democracy. A republic is, literally, a government lacking a king. A democracy is a government by the people who have the oppurtunity to vote for representatives. How is the US not a democracy?

What I said was it wasn't a *real* democracy, but I probably should have used the word 'true' instead, not that I think there's any true democracies around. One good example of why I think that of the US would be that I'd say the same of anywhere where the people vote and the final decision on who governs is made not by the people, but by the Surpreme Court...

I'm sorry to say it, but that statement is liberal propaganda. I am a liberal, and as enraged as all the rest about what happened in Florida, but the Supreme Court only has the power to do that when a special circumstance arises. In almost all elections, this is not needed.

It's never happened in an election here or in any other Western democracy that I can think of. It shouldn't be needed at all. I don't really think it was propaganda at all when people pointed out that in this case the Surpreme Court did appoint the President. Mind you, I find the US political system has a lot more flaws in it than ours does. I'm still trying to work out what the Electoral College (did I get that right?) works...

Cheers...

Violet...

It is simply not true that the Supreme Court has the ability to decide any election.
The Electoral College is a group of people who decide who the next president will be. Each one represents a state, and the number of representatives depends on how many people are in that state.
The problem is that the candidate who gets the majority of the votes in that state gets all the representatives for that state, no matter how close the election was. That is unfair, another great flaw in the American election system.

I could probably give a longer answer but I'll condense myself to just a couple points now. I'll clarify later any point I make, in the event that I do so unclearly here. I don't even have to touch the ugly matter of the last so-called "election", easy as that would be.

Of the 535 members of the 2 congresses, I believe just one of them has an offspring in the armed services, yet they still feel themselves compelled to send thousands of youths--those who make a sacrifice that they overwhelmingly choose to avoid--off in every direction to kill on command and, in league with the business community, collaborate with unpopular regimes on every continent. Many people aren't aware of what goes on in their name, for instance the millions of lives destroyed and made miserable worldwide across decades and to this day for the benefit of our national economic interests and political opportunism, for they're just not trusted by the ruling groups and parties with such information, information which generally tends to be tightly controlled and meticulously directed within a particular framework, or when other people are trusted to be involved in the process the case is framed so as to create support or irrelevant opposition.

The so-called representatives do not represent popular interests, but rather the interests of the privilged elite and the inherantly anti-democratic corporate sectors that got them there in the first place. People of course do have the right to vote however they wish within the framework constructed before them, but the way they vote tends to be molded to support those with the most money to waste on the task of forming public opinions, and also following patterns of social development, which are also basically molded by those with the most money to waste on the process.

Essentially, I would say that the idea that any geniune system of popular representation can exist in a structure based on the Golden Rule is absurd..

does not mean that everyone's interests are heard, or that it is fair. Most of teh points you made above I agree with, but that does not change the facts that the US is a democracy.

(Of course, we've seen how that one has been working lately). The reports that I saw on the great anger of Jordanians towards the U.S. were during the march to war with Iraq when feelings everywhere were running very high. This would have been in February and March. I believe the number was around 5000, at that time, of Jordanians who had gone to fight on the side of the Iraqis.

Around that same time I happened to read an article about what King Abdullah had to say about the impending war. I happened to speak with someone I know, who grew up in Jordan, about this. He sounded pretty disgusted and told me that Abdullah was playing both sides against the middle, so I am sure that you are right about him. Jordan has always been in an odd position in this part of the world. The Arab population is going to side with its Arab neighbors, but the government has always been the greatest ally that the U.S. has in this part of the world. I do believe, however, that King Hussein publicly sided with Saddam during the ``first'' Gulf War.

I'm glad that women are getting a chance to serve in what has always been a very male-dominated part of the world. I have always thought that the fact that King Hussein's queen, the former Lisa Halaby, was an American, might have helped move this process along.

I saw a report last night that in Iraq, as well, it is required that a certain percentage of recently-elected local leaders must be women. I have no way of knowing how much influence they will have or if the new elections are completely bogus, but thought that was an interesting fact.:shrug:
Peace :-)

...a great example of the limits of Western style democracy in the Middle East. True, Jordan is a different situation from Iraq, but most Americans would not feel too terribly great about holding Jordan up as an example of democracy that works and that we support.

I think the key here is that the Bush administration talking about democracy in Jordan needs to be translated from Republispeak into literal international relations rhetoric: "We support pacified countries in the Middle East, specifically the Jordanian model of pacified countries." Jordan makes due as best it can, but the monarchy never lets the crazy democracy advocates get too out of hand.

Like always, it's not democracy that the Bush administration seeks anymore than it was democracy that any number of Democratic or Republican administrations sought during the Cold War: What is being sought is compliance, fealty, and keeping a lid on dissent in the name of the greater war on terrorism.

Just like in the Cold War, conservative foreign policy makers still don't get it. We paid for the mistakes of Reagan's bolstering of the mujahedin in Afghanistan in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, Khobar Towers, the Kenyan Embassy, and Aden to name a few of the spots. Yet our policy makers have learned nothing; now our administration subverts ethical consistency and civic culture in our "allies" in return for basing rights in their country (Uzbekistan, Pakistan), their resource support (Saudi Arabia), and their silence in officially speaking out against the United States.

It is this type of bipolar, unethical foreign policy that produced September 11th, 2001 in the U.S., a brutal civil war in the Congo, the Taliban, and several other foregn policy disasters that have grown into international crises and worse. While both Democratic and Republican administrations have been complicit in these disasters, we as Democrats should see to it that our party will be the one to act responsibly and end decades of nonsense and foolishness as staples of U.S. foreign policy.

Compared to some of her Arab neighbors, Jordan may seem like a democratic paradise, but that is all it is, it just seems that way.