Jordan Inches Toward Democracy

...Early in March the police arrested two sons of Sheik Assad Bayyoud Tamimi, leader of the Islamic Jihad-Beit al-Maqdes, and confiscated somearms and leaflets...

...They don't want their people to hear what is taking place in Jordan...

...It further asserts, for anyone with different ideas, that both Palestinians and Jordanians "oppose Zionist plans for an alternative Palestinian homeland outside Palestine...

...You are free to say whatever you want as long as you don't attack the King directly...

...Ultimately, he went on, his party hopes "to move the Islamic nation against the existing system, to change this system...

...I don't believe that Jordan has any internal problems," he says with conviction...

...The relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood and the extremist group Hamas, currently at the forefront of intifada violence, is particularly portentous...

...Setpiece demonstrations against the United States, staged for television in front of the American Embassy—conveniently located across the street from the Intercontinental Hotel, hangout for most of the media hordes—tend to obscure a real outrage among the electorate...

...THE VAST majority of the population is at the center," says Zeid Rifai, who has served two four-year stints as prime minister and may turn out to be the next chief of the royal court...

...Ironically, it was the Gulf War, in which the United States defended two of the Mideast's legendary tyrants, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and the Emir of Kuwait, that put the brakes on political reform here...

...Muslim Brotherhood members now talk democracy as if they invented it, yet one has to wonder how long their enthusiasm will last after hearing them sing the praises of the toughest terrorists on the West Bank and call for laws to enforce every precept of Islam...

...It cost nearly $60 billion to drive Iraqi troops from Kuwait, where members of the ruling Sabah family keep putting off plans for "elections" as they squabble among themselves about how to divide up the ruins of their fiefdom...

...Periodically extremist political groups get out of line, and the government cracks down to show who the boss is...

...The vehicle for this change is a sevenchapter document called simply the National Charter, drafted at King Hussein's behest by a royal committee...

...Our only crime was that we aired our thoughts...

...Equally disciplined Leftist parties, such as the Baathist Socialists and the Communists, took eight seats with a total of 4 per cent of the vote...

...Indeed, the purpose of the exercise may be to reaffirm the st atus quo, so that King Hussein can balance the competing forces inside his country and among the region's conflicting powers...

...COUNTING ON THE CENTER Jordan Inches Toward Democracy By Donald Kirk Amman Amid the continuing confusion from the West Bank to Kuwait, one might well miss the stirring of democracy here on the East Bank, in Jordan...

...Themainstream Jordanian people support the King, the country itself...

...In the first experiment with electoral democracy, in November 1989, the Brotherhood captured 22 of the 80 seats in Parliament (and it can count on the backing of another eight or so members), even though it barely won 20 per cent of the vote...

...But this does not detract from the fact that he considers advancing the democratic process as the way to achieve the go-between role he very much would like for Jordan and himself...

...Parties not only "must be locally based" but "must not polarize members of the Army or security forces, and cannot form militias or armed groups...

...We are very keen on deepening the concept of democracy," hedeclares...

...A centristdominated Parliament could pay loud lip service to the Palestinian cause while taking whatever steps are necessary to return to the good graces of the United States and of Saudi Arabia, the source of most of the country's oil before the war...

...Apolite Hamas "representative," Ibrahim Shihada, outlines the no-compromise policy of the organization, whose name means bravery and is also the acronym for Harakat Muquwama Islamia, or Islamic Resistance Movement...

...The government would also be able to continue cracking down hard—as it did even in the case of the most virulent anti-U.S...

...Instead, the diminutive monarch was busy dealing with Washington's outrage at his having sided rhetorically with Iraq— even though the Pentagon finally admitted he neither gave material aid to Iraq nor otherwise violated the United Nations sanctions imposed after the invasion of Kuwait last August 2. Ironies keep compounding as one contemplates the statistics...

...Although labor unions have long existed in Jordan, in a society plagued by 20 per cent unemployment and 50 per cent underemployment they are unable to begin to go through the elaborate procedure required for calling a strike legally...

...What makes the Brotherhood such a bore here for the television crews is that its adherents prefer to proselytize for votes and followers rather than indulge in the sort of actions that attract the Western press...

...All our problems are external...

...Asked whether Jordanians will be quite so supportive once economic problems deepen because of the loss of Saudi oil and trade with Iraq, Rifai remains sanguine...

...The charter declares that "Palestinian identity" is "a political" designation and does not contradict the Jordanian identity...

...If Rifai were correct, then this modern city, built in the past 40 years on hills and slopes descending to a crowded center only a century or so old, would be as dull as it sometimes seems to foreign visitors...

...Those caveats provide a strong reminder of Black September, 1970, when the King's troops brutally stamped out a revolt led by the Palestine Liberation Organization's fedayeen that would have turned Jordan into a Palestinian state —and been a direct threat to Israel...

...The results of this policy are all too tangible from the perspective of Jordanian—and Israeli—authorities, if not the rest of the world...

...Our support of Iraq was more vocal than practical," says Al Dastour editor Mahmoud Sharif, speaking in defense of the King...

...While "there is no specific time limit for throwing out King Hussein and the royal family," he said pleasantly, "we hope it will be as soon as possible...

...The King presumably would like to see the maintenance of a centrist consensus in this essentially bourgeois society...

...Our people are not fanatics...

...Everyone is prepared for pluralism," he adds, citing the National Charter he helped to draft as establishing "the features and framework for political life in this country...

...The overriding fact of life here —and the reason the King offered moral support for Saddam—is that better than 60 per cent of the country's 3.5 million people are Palestinians...

...The best compliment given the palace-sponsored shift has come from Jordan's northern neighbor, Syria, no less a dictatorship under Hafez al-Assad than Iraq is under his arch rival, Saddam...

...Still, he believes "the center will dominate...

...The Tahreer Party does not agree with any political system in the Islamic world," he told me in his small engineering office on a suburban side street...

...Definitely there will be a call for a rising tide of extremism," says Assad Abdul Rahman, director-general of the Shoman Foundation, a research group funded by the Arab Bank...

...Around the same time, police rounded up several members of Tahreer, or Liberation, a more radical party...

...The danger is that this type of thinking could become dominant to the exclusion of issues like labor rights, academic and press freedom, and political activity...

...Similarly, the government does not formally censor newspapers, but editors seem to know how far they can go...

...The King undoubtedly wants to be viewed as a "moderate" capable of influencing the Palestinians at a Mideast peace conference—thereby assuring his own security while appearing to espouse their cause...

...It is doing its best to establish an Islamic state, and so it is working against these rulers...

...It promises to be a pivotal step, one that could make this "kingdom" the lone country lurching toward democracy in an Arab world characterized by state-enforced veneration of often corrupt and cruel dictators...

...and anti-Israel demonstrations during the Gulf War—on any sign of terrorist attempts to turn Jordan into a base for violence on the West Bank or inside Israel and Gaza...

...A broad spectrum of Jordanians—from conservative military types to Rightists in and out of government to Muslim Brotherhood fundamentalists to selfstyled middle-of-the-roaders to Leftist extremists—accepts the inevitability of having to vie for popular approval...

...Claiming to "express the actual motives of the Palestinian Muslim people," Shihada says "the Jews will understand our rights only if we fight more and more...

...The charter conference is tentatively scheduled to be held sometime before the end of June...

...We support the struggle against the Jordanian government, the intellectual and political struggle," Rushteh stressed...

...The extremists have already started gaining influence...

...A year ago, he won enough votes in the chamber to take the job away from Suleiman Arad, a leader of the centrist National Front...

...We are new, just a year and a half...

...The doubts are not diminished as he assures me the Brothers "have in mind the civilization of the nation, Muslim creeds and fundamentals," and predicts "the people will keep at a distance those who study foreign ideas and foreign fundamentals...

...Hamas and the Brotherhood reject what they see as the uncompromising secularism of the Palestine Liberation Organization...

...The notion of an Arab Islamic theocracy becoming a more open society seems almost as difficult to believe as Saddam Hussein's promise of "democratic reform" in Iraq...

...For the first time in history, Syria is jamming our radio and television," notes Saleh al-Zu'bi, secretary-general of the Parliament...

...Doubts about his open-mindedness stir when he says "all the people of Jordan have taken the same stand" against the coalition in the Gulf War...

...The Brotherhood is about 40 years old, says National Front leader Arad...

...Donald Kirk, a longtime contributor to The New Leader, writes frequently about Middle Eastern and Asian affairs...

...The cameras never seem to zoom in, for example, on leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose fundamentalism draws automatic police retaliation in most other Arab countries, notably Syria and Iraq...

...He happily introduces me to two Brothers in Parliament, one of whom is Speaker Abdul Latif Arabiyat...

...The 700 centrist candidates in the race together received three quarters of the vote, but won only half the seats...

...The authorities might prefer to display their contempt for Tahreer by ignoring it, but they lose patience when sympathetic sheiks preach its views in mosques and zealots hand out leaflets propounding them...

...It is, in essence, because King Hussein holds the same belief that he plans to approve the National Charter...

...The charter is officially described as "implementing" the 1952 Constitution...

...Politics is not a crime any more," declares a Brotherhood worker, Azzam Tamimi...

...Such language helps buttress the power of the Hashemite rulers in a system the charter terms "a parliamentary hereditary monarchy...

...The Brotherhood insists it does not supply arms to Hamas, since that would bring down the wrath of Jordan's secret police on all of its activities, yet makes no secret of providing moral and political support...

...The key to its success was party discipline and an obvious flaw in the system being used: Voters choose from lists put up by Muslim, Christian and Circassian parties (the last is a minority that fled in the 19th century from Tsarist rule in southern Russia...

...But the Hashemite King Hussein does appear to be serious about instituting at least a semblance of democratization in his own land...

...Control of academia has been ceded to the academics, but seniorityminded rectors and deans, backed by student intimidators, do not hesitate to get rid of unpopular or obstreperous professors...

...He said his party would not participate in any Jordanian election if it had to declare its allegiance to the Constitution...

...In this rather tranquil land, caught between wars and terrorist-inspired insurrections, allowing the exercise of even limited freedom involves unquestionable risks...

...Tahreer spokesman Atta Abu Rushteh seemed pleased with the attention given his little-known band when I talked to him...

...Arabiyat, holder of a doctorate in agricultural engineering from Texas A&M, hails Jordan's democratic progress with a fanaticism that is disturbing...

...Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that the majority moderates sometimes talk as if they were running scared...

...The new document's guarantee of "political pluralism," however, includes significant qualifications: No one may campaign to overthrow the Monarchy...

...Meanwhile in Jordan, where the United States angrily withdrew $55 million in aid, reform seems to be getting back on track...

...A "national conference" set to discuss the National Charter prior to its receiving final approval from King Hussein—consisting of approximately 100 delegates selected by him and by Parliament—had to be postponed...

...That would certainly appear by far to be the safest in the light of Jordan's "realities...

...Sensing their time has arrived, some 60 wouldbe political parties are already jostling for position in a contest that will begin as soon as they are formally legalized in accordance with the charter's provisions, and will not end until the next parliamentary elections in two to three years...

...Bothmen were released in a day or two, but the point could not be missed: Treatment will get tougher if the Islamic Jihad keeps trying to wage its Holy War for Palestine from Jordanian soil...