The king of Jordan is seeking reform. Speaking to his parliament at the start of the week, King Abdullah II said the "white revolution" he has previously outlined would go ahead.
At its heart, King Abdullah’s revolution is about reform, attempting to bring about peaceful transformation in one of the most fraught corners of the Middle East. The most eye-catching reform is the political aspect: the king wants to bring about real change in how elections are conducted. At the moment, voting for the parliament is often conducted along tribal lines, with the consequence that political parties don’t function on ideology. That has left a fractured political scene of nearly two dozen parties.
The reform would change this, uniting the parties into two coalitions, based on ideology (right and left). That would allow real debate in the parliament and even – the king has suggested – create conditions for a move towards greater power for the parliament.
What King Abdullah has recognised is the urgent need for change. Although a monarchy, Jordan has many of the same problems of population and unemployment that the Arab Spring republics had. At the same time, it also has the same fractious political scene as Tunisia and Egypt. That inability of political parties to make common cause has been one of the leading causes of the victories of political Islamist parties. Look at the first post-uprising election in Tunisia, where the Islamists of Ennahda took 37 per cent of the vote. Not one of the next four parties, all non-Islamist, managed about 10 per cent. In the resulting Assembly, that fracturing of the opposition mattered.
Or look at Egypt’s 2012 presidential election. Taking 24 per cent of the vote, Mohammed Morsi beat Ahmed Shafiq by a sliver, although two other non-Islamist candidates (Hamdeen Sabahi and Amr Moussa) took a further 30 per cent of the vote between them. Splitting the vote led to splitting the country.
King Abdullah’s reforms would push political parties to find common ground, rather than splitting their supporters. Rather than leading to gridlock, such a system would be balanced in Jordan by the institution of the monarchy. The king would be able to be a uniter and arbiter of the two blocs, bringing balance. To put it in Arabic, the makhzen, the royal court, could also be the mizan, the balance.
