Week 2: This is What Jordanian Democracy Looks Like
This post is dedicated to habibti Haleema, always searching for common ground.
As I flipped through various Community Awareness Reports containing countless questions and concerns local Jordanians had on decentralization, I noticed some reoccurring comments appear throughout:
- المواطنون ليس لديهم وعي باللامركزيةاومعنى اللامركزية
Citizens have no awareness of decentralization or of the meaning of decentralization
- يشعر المواطنون أن اللامركزية هي فكرة أجنبية ولن تنجح في الثقافة الأردنية
Citizens feel that decentralization is a foreign concept and will not succeed in Jordanian culture
Ghaida looked over my shoulder as I was reading and asked me if I had known what decentralization was before reaching Amman. I answered affirmatively; but much like her fellow citizens she admitted to being unfamiliar with the concept prior to joining the project earlier this year. That got me thinking: While decentralization can be translated into Arabic as اللامركزية, can it really translate into a sustainable and workable system in Jordan specifically and in the Middle East generally? After all, it is imperative to always remember Jordan is for Jordanians and a U.S. based organization like USAID can only merely be a vehicle for empowering Jordanians’ wants—never imposing on them anything else.
Decentralization reform efforts have been supported by the Hashemite regime since the early nineties. King Abdullah II was quoted to have said in January 2005: “[a]s political development is the gateway to the full participation of all segments of the grassroots and civil society institutions in the various aspects of the development process, I assert here that political development should start at the grassroots level, then move up to decision-making centers, and not vice-versa.” So then is this the answer? If Jordan’s king wants and believes in decentralization as a means of making his people happy, can we rest easy knowing we are in fact empowering Jordanians’ wants? Maybe not. While Jordanians do love their King and see him as protecting their needs, he is still royalty—perhaps just ever so slightly out of touch with the average Jordanian.
But then I looked around me—at Ghaida, at Ahmad, at Luna. I am surrounded by Jordanian nationals here in our small office in MOPIC. Even in the CITIES office a few kilometers away, it is Jordanian nationals who wake up each morning and walk through the door, past the photograph of President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump sitting in the Oval Office with King Abdullah and Queen Rania in order to get to work on building a better future for themselves, their families, their friends, and their neighbors. They believe in this goal.
But a question still remains: what is Jordanian decentralization? I think it will take a lot more then two weeks and maybe longer then even ten weeks to truly find that answer. But on Wednesday, I without a doubt saw the beginning of such an answer as I stood in the midst of a political protest surrounded by thousands of chanting Jordanians.
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In an attempt to reform the national economy, the Jordanian government has proposed the 2018 Income Tax Law in the Lower House. The law calls for the taxing of annual incomes of 8,000 Jordanian Dinars (JDs) minimum—nearly 11,280 U.S. Dollars (USDs). Jordan is currently suffering from crippling public debt and the government fears the country will fall to Greece’s fate if they do not do something fast. An IMF loan cannot even be secured without the proper financial institutions and that is what this bill attempts to put into place. However, as the Jordan Times puts it there could not be a worse time for such a law. The Jordanian economy continues to slow each day as it is plagued by high inflation rates, rising unemployment, unfairly low wages, and an influx of refugees from Syria, Iraq, and Palestine. Moreover there is a serious lack of representation for people in government and poor public service provisions. The Jordanian people have already stood silent as unjust price hikes in gas, school supplies, and food worsen with every passing month. In fact, Amman is currently one of the most expensive cities in the world. Jordanians have been silenced in some ways by the fear of the reality of their neighbors in Syria, in Palestine, and in Iraq and a strong desire to not fall to a similar fate. But this bill crosses a line that threatens the way of life for so many.
When the Council of Jordanian Trade Unions reported that a meeting between Prime Minister Han al-Mulki failed to produce a compromise thirty-three associations and unions planned for a rare protest and strike to take place at noon in front of the Professional Association Compound in Amman on Wednesday, May 30, 2018. It would be a piece of political history. Doctors, journalists, teachers, industry sector unions and representatives, pharmacists, and even lawyers endorsed the protest and strike. And I was lucky enough to witness it all.
There I stood in a sea of people with signs that said إضراب_الأردن# or #اضراب_الاربعاء (which translates to Strike Jordan and Wednesday Strike respectively) and معناش# (which in Levantine dialect translates to ‘we do not have’). Jordanians from all sects and classes and positions were there together. I looked to my right at one point and even saw a few men in black judge’s robes—Jordanian lawyers. Chants from the crowds called for huriya (حرية) or freedom.
Over the past two years, my friends and I have attended countless marches in D.C., in Richmond, in Williamsburg—the Woman’s March, March for Our Lives, March for Science, etc. Throughout all these marches with all their unique slogans, one chant always echoes through the crowds: “this is what democracy looks like.” That chant seemed to play over and over again in my head as I watched الشعب الاردني (al-shab al-urduny, or Jordanians) fight not for civil liberties like I had in all those past marches but rather fight for something that is even more unifying: huriya and moreover, their lives. This, I thought to myself, this is what democracy looks like. This is what Jordanian democracy looks like. This is what humanity looks like. And it can exist and flourish even in a monarchial system of government as long as the people are always heard and listened to.
With this memory imprinted in my mind, I headed to work that day where I joined my co-workers in a meeting at the Ministry for Political and Parliamentary Affairs (MOPPA). We were asked to produce an instructions booklet for the implementation of decentralization on the local, grassroots level—something that could be easily followed by local councils across the Kingdom. Lamar exited the meeting with a look of stress, explaining how difficult such a task was to complete. With no answer on what this could look like, we all headed home for the day.
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“You can help impose order on chaos,” Lamar said to me the next day. He needs a comparative legal scholar to study and analyze the decentralization laws of other countries and base a Jordanian implementation process on such an analysis. No one has ever done something like this before, he explains. There is no specialist in Middle Eastern decentralization laws. As a mere rising 2L, I fear I may be entirely out of my league in taking on such a task. But then I remember the people I saw at Wednesday’s protest. If doing this little task can help empower them even more in their fight for a better Jordan then I owe it to them, the Advisory Unit owes it to them, and Jordan CITIES owes it to them.
For this analysis I will not be looking at how the U.S. or France or Japan or Ghana address decentralization reform, but I look to Jordan’s neighbors in Tunisia, Iraq, Morocco, the Palestinian Territories, and Lebanon for guidance. Such a task is too important to limit to five weeks and so this single request from MOPPA has changed my entire summer: I am now only a part of the Decentralization Advisory Unit in the CITIES Project. I will not be moving after five weeks to the Community Cohesion Team. I have a seat at the table now and there is a lot of work to be done. But in 8 weeks’ time, I hope to leave even a miniscule mark on Jordan’s decentralization process so that protesters will always be heard—not from the streets where police are watching them—but from their own homes and communities within their own local councils.
I accepted the task and sat at my desk with the CITIES mug Mark handed me on the first day to signify becoming a part of the family. I took a sip of the piping hot tea inside, I opened my computer, and I got to work.
Disclaimer: This blog post depicts my own thoughts and reflections and does not reflect those of USAID or USAID CITIES.