AMMAN Jordan — Might conservative, top-heavy, security-minded Arab kingdoms provide a feasible model of how politically stressed, violence-prone Arab countries can institute the reforms needed to meet the challenges they face in all sectors? Perhaps — if they complete the job.
One of the oddities of the modern Arab world is that kingdoms have tended to enjoy more legitimacy and stability than most other “republican” countries. Jordan, Morocco, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and a few others have had their ups and downs, but they have also displayed a noteworthy combination of continuity of rule and a recent tendency to accept the need to reform.
It remains unclear in most cases, though, whether such royally mandated reform initiatives are serious models that others can emulate, or are just cruel, tantalizing mirages in the desert, offering a compelling vision of something appealing to strive for but never actually reached, because, in fact, it is not real.
Two Arab kingdoms that are worth examining more closely in this respect are Morocco and Jordan. On several recent trips to these countries, almost every discussion I have had about current affairs quickly reverts back to the urgency of implementing deep political, economic and social reforms, if the citizens wish to ensure a secure, productive future. The monarchies in both lands are very similar: Young kings who took over from legendary long-ruling fathers and are reform darlings of the West, but who also spark sharply contested political debate in their own societies.
King Abdullah II of Jordan and King Mohammad VI of Morocco both inherited countries suffering political tensions and economic stress. These included legacies of pro-American foreign policies, security-dominated domestic governance systems, widening socio-economic disparities, home-grown Islamist opposition movements, and, as they would both discover, local terrorist cells that do not hesitate to attack fellow citizens.
They both quickly initiated reform programs that are driven and largely defined in their broad parameters from the top, but aiming for comprehensive reform of political, economic, social, administrative and educational systems. Both reform programs also are unevenly implemented, and controversial. They elicit fulsome praise from entrenched old guards that believe they can control and limit the actual devolution of power from the hands of the traditional elite; they also draw strong disdain from doubters who criticize the lack of any real change in the exercise of political power, including the two principal components: control of the budget and the security services.
The Moroccan king’s initiative has been nicely documented in a recent report by a study group from the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (cis.org/mideast). It highlights noteworthy advances in political participation, freedom of speech, women’s rights, decentralization, and addressing past human rights abuses through the recently concluded hearings of the Equity and Reconciliation Commission. But it also notes real limitations in all fields, since effective power remains closely held by the king and his governing elite, and the palace alone sets the pace of change.
My own sense is that signs of real change are offset by other disturbing examples of the ugly ways of the past. A few weeks ago, for example, the government seems to have launched a campaign against the feisty opposition weekly magazine Le Journal Hebdomadaire. Credible evidence suggests that the Interior Ministry and local government authorities in Casablanca organized a demonstration against the publication, while state-run television editorially attacked the magazine and a court fined it a disproportionately large amount of money, aimed at crippling it financially.
The respected New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has asked the king to launch an investigation into why the Moroccan state apparently orchestrated this attack against an independent magazine. He would do well to order an honest probe, because the king himself will suffer politically if his government claims to champion reform while it also unleash its goons against independent journalists who peacefully disagree with the state’s policies. Reform and ruffianism simply do not mix, and cannot coexist in Morocco or any other Arab land.
Jordan is at a similar crossroad in its reform history. Upon the king’s directive, a year-long widely consultative and inclusive process was launched and drew up a very ambitious National Agenda for Reform for 2006-2015. It includes very serious, impressive, quantifiable and measurable reform targets in every sphere of life, from politics, justice and education to investment, finance, employment and infrastructure (www.nationalagenda.jo). It is the Arab reform equivalent of a powerful, pace-setting Mercedes 600 limousine — but it is not clear yet if the king and the government have their foot on the accelerator or the brakes in pursuing the changes outlined in the agenda.
Like Morocco, Jordan is serious about achieving economic and social modernity, but appears unsure about how to modernize politically on the basis of equal rights for all citizens. This is mainly due to long-standing concerns about strong local political sentiments that are pro-Palestinian, pro-Arab nationalist, anti-American, anti-Israeli and pro-Islamic. These real constraints cannot be swept under the rug, perpetually covered by appeals to security, tradition, or narrowly controlled power. Economic modernity without political modernity, alas, is antiquity and anti-modernity in the end — Rome and Carthage digitized.
Jordan and Morocco can be important examples of real Arab reforms that are locally defined and implemented. Yet they both seem unsure how to push political change alongside economic and administrative reforms. They should address this challenge more boldly because they still have the leadership legitimacy to do so, which is not the case in many other Arab countries.
Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.
Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 22 March 2006
Word Count: 942
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