Jordan Times
Tuesday, September 7, 1999
A decade of democracy: Seminar explores progress
of political reforms
By Francesca Ciriaci
AMMAN — One step forward, two steps back: This is how Jordan's ten-year democratic march was described by most politicians and academics convened at Monday's opening of a three-day conference on the country's political liberalisation.
“The democratic process stopped in 1993,” said Senator and former Prime Minister Taher Masri, citing the introduction of the one-person, one-vote system by temporary legislation that year as the beginning of the end of the political liberalisation process launched in 1989.
“Since then, democracy has been only a facade. [Parliamentary] elections have gone ahead as scheduled, but the democratisation process was paralysed,” said Masri, one of the country's most influential opinion leaders.
Salim Nasser, head of the Lebanese Centre for Policy Studies, stressed that inadequate democratic development in Jordan and the Arab region is a direct consequence of still very limited popular participation.
“Despite the fact that we have tasted some degree of freedom, political participation remains related to socio-economic conditions... and it is not enough to achieve the needed democratic changes,” he said.
Similar views were echoed by most speakers at yesterday's first sessions of the conference, entitled “The 10th Anniversary of the Launching of the Democratic Process in Jordan — Assessment and Outlook, 1989-1999” and organised by Germany's Konrad Adenauer Foundation and Al Urdun Al Jadid.
“There is no harm in admitting that our democratic process has not moved over the past five years, but it actually regressed,” Al Urdun Al Jadid Director Hani Hourani said in his opening address.
“Democracy is not an act isolated from all other measures [undertaken] to move the wheel of economic development,” Hourani said. “Democratic reforms are not a luxury, a mere slogan, or an act of charity by the ruling authorities; democracy is an objective need of the Jordanian people.”
Participants in the conference attempted to identify the major obstacles on the path of democratisation since it was launched by the late King Hussein, in the wake of popular protests in the south of the Kingdom that witnessed active involvement of bedouin tribes — traditionally pillars of the Jordanian regime.
In addition to the 1993 Elections Law, which introduced a controversial voting system in demographically unequal constituencies — widely considered to favour tribal affiliation at the expense of political considerations — academics and politicians also pointed the finger at the restrictive 1997 Press and Publications Law.
Describing the law as the “coup de grace to public liberties,” Taher Masri warned against the power games of an oligarchy which over the past 50 years has disguised the pursuit of its self-interests as “national interests.”
“Certain conservative forces are benefiting now from the one-person, one-vote system and this strict press law in the same way as they benefited from martial law,” he said. “They learned a certain democratic language, and fight democracy in the name of democracy.”
The signing of the 1994 peace treaty with Israel was also considered a setback in Jordan's democratic march.
“Peace negatively affected democratisation,” Masri said, “it entrenched the orientation to ignore public opinion, and took the national dialogue down to zero.”
The former premier said only national unity, meaning real equality between Trans-Jordanians and Jordanians of Palestinian origin, can help restore the “concept of state,” which has been “deformed” by geographical and tribal affiliations, a religious and patriarchal structure of society, and corruption.
According to Hourani, the degeneration of political life in the country due to lack of accountability and transparency was evident in two crises that occurred in summer 1998: The water crisis, and the scandal of the economic growth rates, which international organisations revealed around five percentage points below official figures.
“Jordanians have shown great patience,” said Hourani. “The least they deserve is more opportunities to participate in political life.”
The conference is being held at the Radisson SAS Hotel under the patronage of His Majesty King Abdullah, who was represented at yesterday's opening ceremony by his political adviser, Adnan Abu Odeh.
Today, economist Fahed Fanek is scheduled to chair a session on economic development and democracy, to be followed by a debate on accountability and transparency as democratic mechanisms leading to economic development.
In the afternoon, Justice Minister Hamzeh Haddad will chair a session entitled “Institutionalising the State of Law.”
Among the questions scheduled to be tackled by speakers on Wednesday, the last day of the symposium, is “Freedom of Expression and the Media,” with contributions by former Information Minister Nasser Judeh and the Arab Daily's Editor-in-Chief Ramzi Khoury.
Before the closing remarks, Senator and former Information Minister Leila Sharaf is scheduled to chair a roundtable on “The Future of the Democratic Process in Jordan.”