A Future Jordan - نحن الأردن

King Abdullah II on Political Reform in Jordan

King Abdullah II: "Iraq is the Battleground - the West against Iran"
SPRING 2005 • VOLUME XII: NUMBER 2

King Abdullah II bin Al Hussein, descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, is the fourth ruler of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the great-grandson of his namesake, the kingdom's founder. Born on January 30, 1962, to King Hussein's second wife, the British-born Princess Muna, he is the eldest of Hussein's sons and was proclaimed crown prince at birth. When Abdullah was three years old, however, Hussein transferred that title to his own younger brother, Hassan. After his early schooling in Amman, Abdullah was educated in private schools in England and the United States and then, in 1980, embarked on a military career, attending Britain's Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. For the next nineteen years, he rose through the ranks of the Jordanian army, eventually serving as commander of the Royal Jordanian Special Forces and as special operations commander. Along the way, he took classes at Oxford and Georgetown universities and further military training at Fort Knox and the Royal Staff College at Camberley, United Kingdom. In 1998, he assumed the rank of major general, which he held when he was proclaimed crown prince by his father on January 24, 1999. Abdullah assumed the throne when his father died on February 7, 1999. Abdullah and his wife, Queen Rania, have two sons and two daughters. On January 11, 2005, Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, interviewed King Abdullah II at his private office in a secluded compound outside of Amman.

…. Jordanian Political Reform
MEQ: When you first took office six years ago, you highlighted a policy of non-interference in the affairs of others. But over the last year, you have spoken out about developments inside Iraq and advised Arafat that he should look in the mirror and see if he is helping his people. Why the change?

Abdullah: Not getting involved in the internal affairs of others means that we are not committing ourselves to get into the West Bank. We've been very careful about doing that, and using the Iraq example, this is one of the arguments I'm using. I have been very opposed to the idea of the Hashemite family getting involved in Iraq. Sheikh Ali, the Hashemite prince, keeps pounding on our door to come and visit us, but I refuse and have said so to everyone, including Prince Hassan. Whenever the subject came up, I have disagreed with members of my cabinet about getting involved in Iraq. I don't think that there is a role for the Hashemites. If there is a role for the Hashemites, that comes many years down the line if the Iraqis want it. But it's a non-starter for me. It's the same argument that I use when I'm talking about the moral high ground of the Iranians and others who wish certain involvement in Iraq when I say that I don't believe that Amman should get involved in Baghdad.

We don't play those sort of Cold War games, with my people inside the West Bank trying to foment against the other side. So yes, I call things as I see them, whether on Iran and Iraq or Arafat and Palestinians.

My statement on Arafat was calculated to have an impact. I didn't know that he was that ill. But I just saw what was going on with him and had to speak out. The problem with the Palestinians is they spend most of their time blaming the Arab street and the Arab leaders. And that's what I was saying—Stop blaming us, because we're ready to help you, but you've got to help yourself first. If you look at Al-Jazeera, it's always saying, "Where are the Arab leaders; where's the Arab street, and they're letting us down." No. You're letting yourselves down. We want to help you, but every time I sat down with Arafat and asked, where's your plan, where's your strategy, there was nothing there.

MEQ: Six years ago the economy was your top priority, and you said it a 100 times. What is your top priority now?

Abdullah: When we change priorities, it doesn't mean that we lessen any of the other ones. So I think socioeconomic issues are something that we still have to move on full speed, and we can't take any prisoners on that. But a year ago I announced that we're now ready for political reform. Then, in a speech in parliament, I said political reform is important, but the flavor of the next couple of months is administration reform. Some people here said, "Ah, we're backing down on political reform." But it's not one thing and not the other. We start on a layered level of attacking different problems in Jordan, and all these programs are going to continue. But we're now in a position to really tackle political reform.

We will have a major proposal coming out on political reform.[5] The problem is I have tried to deal with political reform from the top down, and it's not working. I've been trying to engage with this parliament on creating, instead of our current thirty or so political parties, just two or three or four that represent left, right, and center. I've been begging the parliamentarians.

There are 110 parliamentarians who are better educated and younger than their predecessors, and I said, "What do you stand for? We know what the older generation stands for, but you, as a young parliamentarian, where do you stand on health? Where do you stand on education? Where do you stand on social services?" I was hoping that we'd be able to tackle the issues of giving enough bite to young parliamentarians so that we could start creating these blocs. If we do this, we said to them, then in the next parliamentary elections, you'll be elected because of your party's political platform and not because you're from this tribe or this village or this particular group. Unfortunately, we're not going to get there, not in this round. So I'm now going to work from the bottom up. We're going to do something in Jordan that has not been done before in the Middle East. And it's serious. I had my first meeting with a very small group, and I said, "You all understand when we start the process, we're talking about true democratic political reform. Once we start this, there's no going back, and it's comprehensive, and it's long term."

You'll notice when we talk about political reform, there's reform also for the security services. I think they're beginning to get the message that you can't have political reform and have the archaic way of doing things.

[1] "Final Communiqué of the Seventh Meeting of the Neighboring Countries of Iraq," Jordanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Amman, Jan. 6, 2005.
[2] Interview on Chris Matthews Show, MSNBC, Dec. 12, 2004.
[3] White House news release, Jan. 9, 2005.
[4] White House news conference, Jan. 10, 2005.
[5] On Jan. 26, 2005, King Abdullah announced an initiative to decentralize Jordanian political life, creating directly elected regional assemblies with control over local expenditures.

posted by Ashraf Zeitoon @ 12:26 AM