Week 3: My favorite place in Amman
“Yalla Layla, let’s go,” says Ghaida.
I look up from my computer screen to see it is time for our meeting upstairs with the Minister. We are all in slight disbelief it is finally happening as it has been cancelled and rescheduled twice already in the few weeks I have been here. I grab my legal pad and head out the door to meet my teammates at the elevator. We reach the fourth floor and head into a conference room with a large roundtable in the center, a projector screen in the front, and on the back wall, a series of pictures of the late King Hussein (الله يرحمه or Allah Yerrhamo, an Arabic phrase that roughly translates to rest in peace) on the far left, King Abdullah II in the center, and Crown Prince Al-Hussein bin Abdullah II on the far right. All three men are wearing a tasseled red and white checkered keffiyeh, known in Jordan as a شماغ مهدب or shemagh mhadab. These three pictures can be found in almost any office and room in any Jordanian government building—a reminder that the monarchy is at the center of all in Jordan and that ministers must always act in the best interest of the country, the people, and the monarchy. Otherwise, they can be replaced by the King very easily.
The PowerPoint was set and we sat in a row across from other key Ministry of Planning officials awaiting the Minister’s arrival. Ghaida motioned for Lamar to come sit in the seat closest to the Minister, leaving me in charge of moving from slide to slide as the presentation proceeded—entirely too much power and responsibility to give an intern, I quietly joked to my teammates. The Ministry of Planning is tasked with contributing to the comprehensive and sustainable development of the Jordanian Kingdom. As such, this ministry, more then any others, has a critical role to play in the process of decentralization. It is just one of the key reasons the Advisory Unit is stationed in the Ministry and not the CITIES office, after all. Though just one floor away, the Minister had not been updated on our current approach or work plan for decentralization. Thus, this meeting would be a debrief on our progress as well as a preview of deliverables to come.
Minister Imad Fakhoury entered the room and swiftly dismissed the need for any pomp and circumstance, stating his desire to get straight to business. Lamar walked him through all that the team had already accomplished, namely their completion of the first ever needs setting sessions held by local councils throughout the kingdom prior to the start of Ramadan and the subsequent creation of Needs List Manuals from these sessions. He spoke of our current and future tasks in creating instructions for the functioning of local councils, developing a comprehensive work plan for decentralization, and producing periodic progress reports and briefs on the implementation of our decentralization workplan. To say Fakhoury was excited about the work we were doing would be an understatement. He was thrilled and eager to cooperate and offer assistance in any way he and his office could. His questions showed not just a passion for this field but also a deep understanding of decentralization and overall development. This is of course far from surprising once you take a look at his resume: a graduate of Berkley, Case Western, Harvard, and Northwestern with a long history of public service in the Hashemite Kingdom and international government organizations like the UNDP. Of all the meetings I had sat in on in all the ministries from the Ministry of the Interior to the Ministry of Parliamentary and Political Affairs (MOPPA), this was by far the best. It lent a huge sense of optimism to the project’s short and long-term success.
To end the meeting, he presented us with a new title. No longer would we be known as the Advisory Unit on Decentralization. We are now the Secretariat to the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Decentralization.
Not too shabby.
***
The protests continue each night at 10 PM after iftar at الدوار الرابع (the Fourth Circle) or as Jordanians call it, الرابع (the Fourth). It is the circle that sits facing the Prime Minister’s Office. As I drove past one night from an iftar dinner, I stopped with my co-worker in the stand still traffic, watching and listening. A crowd gathered in a dirt field across the street from the Prime Minister’s Office. I could see a few windows on the top floor of the building with drawn up curtains and shadows moving behind it. They closed as soon as the people began chanting for the overthrow of the government. A large contingency of police and Gendarmerie personnel gathered on the streets and roads surrounding the protestors. But I listened as they received their commands: Do not touch the protestors, they are your brothers. I saw a large group in the distance approaching the area. They were dressed in long black robes. Lawyers.
Jordanian lawyers and the Jordanian Bar Association have a large role in political activism in this country that began far before these protests. I wanted so much to join them, but it was late and there was work to get done in the morning.
The protestors’ chants over the past week have not fallen on deaf ears. King Abdullah appointed a new Prime Minister following Hani Mulki’s resignation: Omar al-Razzaz, the former Minister of Education. When I heard the news I thought back to the three portraits that hang in every government office of the Former King, the Current King and the Crown Prince and the warning they represent to those whose offices they reside in. In forming a new government, any of the officials and ministers we have talked to over the past few weeks could be replaced—even Fakhoury—which would take us back to square one of scheduling appointments to brief such new officials.
***
Back in the office I have nearly completed compiling the main decentralization laws of Tunisia, Morocco, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine and translating the relevant sections on local project planning, budgeting, implementing and monitoring into English from Arabic and/or French. While Tunisia has been boasted as the single success story of the Arab Uprisings, I do not think I truly understood the extend of the country’s success until I had read their decentralization law—Code des Collectivités Locales. Its level of detail and structure was astounding. Tunisia is without a doubt, in my mind, the center of the modern Middle East—a pillar of progress that has been and should continue to be emulated by all its Arab neighbors, especially Jordan.
But credit is due elsewhere as well. Moroccan and Iraqi laws have proven to provide a wealth of guidance. Morocco’s loi organique relative aux communes instructs local councils to create a plan of actions comprised of local projects lasting three years. Much like Tunisia, Iraq and Morocco also provide a detailed timeline for project budgeting in local communities. They all discuss a similar process of creating a preliminary draft budget which will ultimately be approved by the locality, regional governor, and Minister of Finance.
However, these legal frameworks are just the beginning of what the comparative analysis will entail. I must look further into the instructions and manuals governments, NGOS, and IGOs present to localities, as well as other official regulations and bylaws. Because these can be more difficult to find, I have experienced first-hand the close and supportive network that is the international development community as Lamar passed me his work phone to connect me with individuals around the Middle East working on decentralization in Iraq, Lebanon, and Tunisia all conveniently linked together in a VNG International WhatsApp group chat. Since 2011 and the Arab Uprisings, decentralization reform efforts have swept the Arab world and this group chat illustrates the extent of such efforts. As I sent them a request for more data, texts and emails came flooding in with suggestions.
I looked up at the clock as I printed out the last of the suggested manuals and regulations. The stack was a few inches high at this point. It was 2:30 PM and the office was beginning to clear out—on a Thursday afternoon during Ramadan, it is hard to avoid the temptation of starting the weekend as soon as possible.
As a team we had accomplished a great deal this week. Ghaida was working on the official decentralization work plan through the end of the CITIES project in 2021 and coordinating efforts with consultants. Ahmad had created the first version of an instructions manual for the implementation of development and services projects in localities and the coordination mechanisms between each level of government (تعليمات متابعة تنفيذ المشاريع التنموية والخدمية والتنسيق بين المجالس). It outlined the process for creating progress reports, recommendations, and observations on local devlopment and public service provisions.
Ghaida joked with Lamar that he was lucky to have a team like us, adding “even the intern is working hard.” Lamar turned to me and asked if I had a comeback for her saying “even the intern.” I said I would get her back another time.
I looked around the room as we all started packing up for the weekend. In the past three weeks I had found myself a space in this family and of all the places in Amman from the souks to the malls to the Roman ruins, this, I thought to myself, this is my favorite place to be.
Disclaimer: This blog represents my own thoughts and reflections and not those of USAID or USAID CITIES.