Last week I noted that King Abdullah faced a real political problem, with a majority of the Parliament having declared their intent to deny confidence to Adnan Badran's government. One of his options - exploiting a legal loophole to declare that because Parliament is out of session, no confidence vote is constitutional required - appears to be closing: al-Ghad reported yesterday that House Speaker Abd al Hadi al-Majali has officially informed Badran that 68 MPs have endorsed a call for an extraordinary session of Parliament with an agenda including the confidence vote.
Interestingly, the proposed agenda for the special session included some 81 different laws which need to be discussed.... but did not include the controversial Professional Associations law: 56 MPs needed to sign a request that it be discussed, but only 50 signatures could be obtained.
I wanted to note one grand irony in all of this Jordanian political crisis: up until now, the current Parliament was widely seen as a joke because it has been so thoroughly gerrymandered to guarantee the over-representation of southern, ethnic Transjordanians and apolitical service-oriented MPs. King Abdullah's "Jordan First" campaign further strengthened the political position of conservative Jordanian nationalists - like, for example, House Speaker Abd al-Hadi al-Majali, one of that trend's most prominent figures. The gerrymandered Parliament and the "Jordan First" campaign are now biting Badran's government in the proverbial tushy.
One of the great cliches of Jordanian political studies is that ethnic Transjordanians are the "bedrock" of Hashemite support. Stacking the Parliament with such figures was supposed to ensure an easy majority of regime loyalists. But this assumption blinded a lot of people to a rising and transforming ethnic Jordanian nationalism, whose commitment to the Hashemites has been sorely tested by economic and political reforms which have often disproportionately hurt the Jordanian south at the expense of the more "Palestinian" Amman, and hurt the Transjordanian-dominated public sector at the expense of the Palestinian-dominated private sector. (I've written a lot about Jordan's identity politics - a chapter-length version is in this book.)
When Badran formed a "reformist" government which almost completely excluded representatives of the Jordanian south, this brought these conservative Jordanian nationalists to a boil. Given Jordanian political traditions of ethnic and regional distribution within all Cabinets, it seems highly implausible that Badran's exclusion of the Jordanian conservatives was an accident. They certainly don't think it was an accident. And that's what's at stake in this political showdown: the political fortunes of a conservative Jordanian nationalism which had until quite recently seemed ascendent, and of an economic reform agenda which threatens their interests.
So is this Jordan's "constitutional moment?"
Posted by: praktike | May 11, 2005 at 11:01 AM
Interesting, interesting indeed. I suppose the troubles in Ma'an over the past 3 years were somewhat of the canary in the coal mine.
However, for Pratike, I personally would put real and good money that there is not a "constitutional moment" on the agenda.
Posted by: collounsbury | May 11, 2005 at 11:06 AM
However, for Pratike, I personally would put real and good money that there is not a "constitutional moment" on the agenda.
One can dream, cl. One can dream.
Posted by: praktike | May 11, 2005 at 11:15 AM
I'm paid not to dream on these sorts of things. Bad for business, not knowing where the butter is. My money is the Hashemites still have the butter.
Posted by: collounsbury | May 11, 2005 at 03:49 PM