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Democracy on a leash in
Jordan
By Ian Urbina
As most
of the coverage quickly points out, recent Jordanian
elections saw surprisingly few surprises. Having called
off the popular vote first in 1997 and repeatedly
thereafter, the Hashemite crown finally decided to roll
the electoral dice and, in the end, came out all the
stronger.
For a politically rocky region, this
was democracy at its smoothest. A clear majority of the
seats went to pro-government tribal candidates, thereby
diluting what few opposition voices previously resided
in parliament. Voter turnout topped 58 percent - a
little lower than hoped, but still more than is typical,
for example, in United States presidential elections.
Jordan's Islamists added credibility to the electoral
process. Rather than boycotting, as is typical, they
opted to join the process, and much to the relief of the
King, they scored only 17 out of 110 total seats, far
fewer than expected.
With a brutal Israeli
occupation continuing on one border, and a messy US
occupation unfolding on another, Jordanian political
parties might have decided to use the election season to
air pent-up frustrations. But for the most part, they
didn't. This was especially noteworthy since 60 percent
of Jordanians are Palestinians and close to 90 percent
of Jordanians opposed the US invasion of Iraq.
Happiest of all is King Abdullah. In one fell
swoop, he reinforced the rubber-stampers he needs, and
fortified the democratizer image he so cherishes.
The elections were also a step forward for
women. Six of the parliamentary seats were set aside for
female candidates. Though none were directly voted into
office, the top six candidates will be seated in the
coming weeks. From a total 776 Jordanians competing for
seats in parliament, 54 female candidates ran, the most
ever.
These advances notwithstanding, there is
another side to the story. One of the most noteworthy
elements of the recent Jordanian elections was who did
not show up on the ballot. Despite being a popular
favorite, Toujan Faisal, the only woman in Jordanian
history to be elected to a seat in the lower house of
parliament, was barred from running, and the tale of her
exclusion gets to the heart of certain worrisome trends
inside the Hashemite kingdom.
In 1993, Toujan
Faisal became the first female parliamentarian in
Jordan, and quickly earned a reputation as a fierce
critic of the crown as well as of the nation's Muslim
extremists. In 1997, Faisal lost her seat amid
widespread allegations that boxes had been filled with
false ballots to prevent her from retaining office.
Still, she kept up her fight. In March 2002, Faisal
published on the Internet a letter to the government
questioning whether the prime minister - whose family
owns the bulk of the nation's car-insurance business -
might be benefiting personally by having doubled
insurance premiums. Faisal was hauled before a military
court and summarily sentenced to a year-and-a-half
sentence for having "damaged the reputation of the
state".
After significant domestic uproar and
international pressure, not to mention a 29-day hunger
strike, Faisal was pardoned and released from prison.
However, because of one of the government's "temporary
laws", which take the country's "essential security
needs" as their basis, Faisal's conviction forbids her,
in perpetuity, from holding political office.
It
is these "temporary laws" that are the crux of the
matter in Jordanian politics. Not only are they the
reason for the exclusion of such popular dissenters as
Toujan Faisal, but more broadly it is the proliferation
of these extra-constitutional decrees that has gutted
what democratic advances Jordan made in the early '90s.
These laws have thoroughly undermined Jordan's status as
the favorite Western poster-child of slow-brew
democratization and moderate Arab reformism.
Not
unlike the current situation in the United States in
which Attorney General John Ashcroft, armed with the
boundless terms of the US-Patriot Act, has shackled some
of the core elements of the US constitution such as
habeas corpus, the Jordanian government has been on a
similar path since well before the post-September 11
crackdowns and roundups that swept countries in the
region. As Jillian Schwedler, a professor of Middle East
politics, wrote for a June 2002 issue of Middle East
Report Online, the Jordanian democratic project has been
unraveling at an accelerating pace for years. First, in
1997 the government shut down parliament before the end
of session so as to pass a number of restrictive press
laws, and then in June 2001 the government dissolved
parliament altogether so that the executive branch could
fully hijack the writing of legislation.
The
constitution allows for temporary laws only when the
security of the state is in jeopardy, but more than 120
such laws have been signed in the past two years.
Between 1930 and 1999, only about 60 such "temporary
laws" were passed in total by 17 different governments.
The domestic restrictions embodied in these
"temporary laws" span the gamut. Public gatherings
require a three-day-advance permit, which is rarely
given. Criticism of "friendly" nations is a crime
prosecuted before a military court. The penalty for
press violations has been stepped up to three-year
prison sentences. Restrictions on the foreign purchase
of land has been loosened. Misdemeanor convictions come
with no right to appeal. Civil servants are prevented
from signing petitions that might reflect poorly on the
state.
Temporary laws have also been used to
tilt the electoral playing field significantly to favor
the regime. The majority Palestinian population, which
is largely based in the central and northern cities, is
often the most critical of the crown. By expanding the
parliament size from 80 to 110 seats the intention was,
according to some, to water down the critics and
concentrate the membership of pro-regime clans from the
west and south of the country. Estimates released by
Fawzi Samhouri, director of the Jordan Society for
Citizens' Rights, a pro-democracy group that the
authorities dissolved last year, reveal, for example,
that Amman has roughly one parliament member for each
52,255 voters, whereas cities such as Karak, home town
of the government's interior minister, has a parliament
member for every 6,000 voters.
None of this
takes away from the fact that the restoration of
parliamentary elections in Jordan was an essential step
forward. But by far the most important challenge lies
immediately ahead. The next parliament is supposed to
review every one of the "temporary laws" and have the
option to accept or reject each. That the political deck
has been stacked with pro-regime types raises legitimate
skepticism over whether the newly elected parliament
will do what is right: begin the across-the-board
reversal of these anti-democratic laws. Also dubious for
prospects of re-democratization in Jordan is the
conservative and non-elected upper house, which has full
veto power if the lower and elected parliamentarians
step out of line.
Nevertheless, there is no harm
in hoping. Perhaps the new parliament will provide a few
more surprises than came in the generally sanitized and
unsurprising elections that put it into
power.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd.
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