Jordan Feature: Meaningful Changes or Token Reforms? (Yom and Tarawneh)
Sunday, August 21, 2011 at 9:21
King Abdullah of JordanLast week, the Jordanian regime presented a series of Constitutional changes purportedly addressing questions of power between the monarchy, the Cabinet, and the legislature.
But are the amendments significant? Sean Yom, writing for Foreign Policy, and Naseem Tarawneh, writing on the blog The Black Iris, present two views:
Yom: "Jordan Goes Morocco"
Jordan unveiled a package of constitutional amendments last Sunday which offered the most drastic overhaul of the 1952 constitution ever proposed. King Abdullah promised these revisions on June 12 in a surprising televised speech. The new push came in response to five months of increasingly strident protests and criticism, and seemed designed to emulate the constitutional reform gambit of Morocco's King Mohammed VI.
Many Jordanians were stunned by the explicit promise in June of a future system that would draw governing cabinets from the elected parliament rather than appointment by palace fiat. The idea of constitutional monarchy, which entails divesting absolute royal power to the legislature alongside other sweeping institutional changes, captivated the political salons, business magazines, andcivic debates of Amman through July. Many intellectuals compared the excitement in the air to 1989, when King Hussein began to end decades of authoritarian closure through unprecedented political reforms.
The revisions unveiled on Sunday made some serious changes, but fell far short of that promise of elected governments. Unlike in Morocco, there will be no popular referendum. The reforms do not curb the king's core powers or move toward a constitutional monarchy in which he would reign but not rule. The election and parties law, unchecked security services, and rife corruption go untouched. Economic development outside Amman remains laggard. Will such a limited reform gambit be enough to blunt popular pressure on the embattled king?
The royal committee tasked with revising the constitution -- a 10-person panel loaded with former prime ministers and legal luminaries -- predictably did not ask the Hashemite dynasty to surrender its absolutist crown. The 42 amendments do recommend meaningful changes, such as establishing a constitutional court, ensuring independent oversight of elections, limiting the dreaded security courts, and reaffirming protections of expressive freedom. The reforms mostly ignore the monarchy's lopsided executive supremacy that lies at the heart of Jordanian autocracy. Further, unlike Morocco's recent example, the amendments will not face popular referendum.
Many Jordanians noted the subtle shift within official discourse from malakiyyah destouriyyah, or constitutional monarchy, to islah destouri, or constitutional reform -- a maneuver that symbolized the unwillingness of the monarchy to distance itself from executive affairs.
Tarawneh: "The Problem With Jordan's Constitutional Amendments"
In the past week or so, much of the political sphere has been abuzz with the proposed constitutional reforms that come out of several months of deliberation by an assigned 10-member Royal committee. Of the 42 amendements there is little I can comment on. Many of its proponents have suggested that it lays the groundwork for an elected government, but of course none of these amendments actually suggests that outright and it would be ridiculous to suggest that when the country “is ready for democracy”, the state will simply go back and amend the constitution once again, as if this was all merely elective surgery. These amendements do not remove any authoritarian powers from the King, which was the ambition of those that called for a more constitutional monarchy, and subsequently, changes to the constitution. What these amendments do is simply create some logical additions that should have been in place from the start. This include the inability for the King to dissolve parliament at will, banning torture, limiting the government’s issuance of temporary laws. In other words, much of the praise over these amendments are akin to a hungry dog being given a bone; convincing him it’s a steak isn’t much of a problem. Personally, I am neither willing to praise them nor discard them completely as superficial. The need to land on one side or the other highlights the very problem with this whole story, where we, as citizens, are supposed to think only of the result.
Meanwhile, the process remains broken in this country. Once again, we are focused on outcomes, and we are focused on binary solutions. The process is reduced to economics by it proponents, whereby supply equals demand. People demanded reforms, the King delivered constitutional amendments. No one should complain. That’s the end of it.
Alas, the story doesn’t end there, and nor should it.
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