Al-Ghad reported on yet another public opinion poll in Jordan last week, this one conducted by Musa Shtawi's Center for Social Research (this English-language Jordan Times link should be good for another couple of days; here's Khalaf's take on it). Its findings are a mixed bag, and a little hard to interpret.
The headlined findings in most of the reports I've seen are that 70.6% of Jordanians think that the country "is moving in the right direction", and an overwhelming majority of Jordanians see security and terrorism as the top priority right now. 90.4% support a proposed tough new counter-terrorism law. Public confidence is highest in the military (98.2%) and the intelligence agencies (97.6%). Frankly, if I were asked that question in Jordan, or any other Arab country, I'd know the right answer too.
Reading the Jordan Times and al-Ghad is like reading two entirely different surveys. The Jordan Times chose to highlight a rather oddly presented table of the "top three priorities facing the government": 29% ranked terrorism number one, with no other issue cracking 11% as a first choice. Drawing on the line labeled "total" gives this rather, um, intriguing set of aggregate responses to the question of the three highest priority issues for the government:
Terrorism 25.5%
Do Not Know 21.2%
Instability of Neighboring Countries 17.9%
No problems 14.9%
Opposition to Jordan's Policies 3.8%
Weak democratic practices 3.2%
Impact of a weak economy 3.1%
If that's an accurate summary of Jordanian priorities right now, it's rather sad: more people say Jordan has "no problems" than place either democracy or the economy in the top three issues facing the country. Heck, more people see political opposition as a greater problem than the weakness of democracy or the economy. What's even more striking: in a poll conducted by the same organization in September (before the Amman terror attack), corruption was the highest ranking issue; now only 1.7% place it in the top three priorities. It might not be surprising that democracy and public freedoms have receded in importance in the wake of a terrorist attack - but what explains the sudden loss of interest in economic and social issues, which had been in the forefront in most other recent polls?
Perhaps the answer comes from reading al-Ghad, which presents the data entirely differently. In al-Ghad, the key findings are this list of "the number one problem facing the country today":
Rising cost of living 30.2%
Unemployment 27.4%
Poverty 18.3%
Declining economic conditions 5.9%
Corruption 4.0%
How to reconcile that with the Jordan Times presentation is anyone's guess. But if al-Ghad presents it more accurately, then the terror attacks have not in fact diverted the attention of Jordanians from economic issues, and those remain the top priority - even if no political freedoms or democracy issue rates a mention.
The only reassuring finding from a liberal's point of view is that just over 75% say that reforms should continue after the terrorist attacks, with only 11% saying they should go slower and 6% saying they should be ended. 69% say that security and reform should be balanced, compared to 25% who say that security should take priority over reform. Since "reform" is the official policy of the Bakhit government, however, this question is less revealing than it might have been - it isn't posed as an alternative to counter-terrorism (i.e. "should the response to terror be more counter-terror legislation or more political reform?"), so respondents aren't really asked to decide their priorities.
Finally, on the "public sphere" or "town square" question: 48.4% say that the freedom to publicly criticize the government's policies is guaranteed - which should be seen as distressingly low, but is actually higher than in other recent surveys. Since if anything this freedom has objectively been restricted in the last few months (particularly with regard to Islamist or radical discourse), you'd have to suspect that this question is actually a proxy for "should there be freedom to publicly criticize the government" - and that's the number which has gone down.
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