The Arab Citizen’s Task: Complaining and Voting

AMMAN -- It is hard to know what is significant about the Jordanian parliamentary elections that were held in Amman last month, given that pro-government deputies won 104 of the 110 seats in the elected lower house -- a body that in any case is balanced, or complemented, by the upper house that the king appoints. The government's claim that this reflects a spirited Arab-Islamic democratic example is not very credible, because there is no known normal human society on earth where 94.5 percent of elected MPs support the government.

In Amman this week I have only encountered cynicism -- not anger or humiliation -- among people from different walks of life, who sense that those who control the Jordanian political system do what is necessary to ensure order and full control. Jordan is neither a shining Arab democracy nor a vile police state that does the bidding of the United States or Israel. Jordan is, rather, a relatively typical modern Arab security state that absolutely assigns top priority to law and order, and makes no allowances for opposing forces to assume power or influence policy-making.

Within that framework, elections, political parties, and a more open press and civil society should be understood as mechanisms of individual expression, not instruments of political contestation. Power is not up for grabs here. The ruling elite -- a combination of tribal-, corporate-, monarchy- and security-based forces -- has not changed significantly in 80 years, which is one reason for Jordan's relative successes in the turbulent modern Arab world. 

Like most Arab countries -- Egypt, Syria, Morocco, Kuwait, Yemen, Tunisia, take your choice, they're very much the same -- Jordan has absorbed the language and structures of democratic governance without its substance. Citizens vote, but parliament, with its built-in, predictable pro-government majority, offers no meaningful accountability of the ruling elite.

Most Jordanians accept this system, or at least do not actively resist or challenge it. The vital democratic principle of "the consent of the governed" has been adjusted to "the acquiescence of the governed" -- a majority that does not take political governance too seriously, because it appreciates what it offers them in comparison with many other Arab countries. The system shuns severe abuses of citizen rights and human dignity -- no mass graves have ever been found here, nobody disappears forever in the middle of the night. Unable to shape policy, citizens instead value the stability it provides -- the opportunity to raise their children in safety, travel freely, work in any field they wish, educate themselves profusely, and have the chance to improve their position in life.

So we should not make the mistake of judging this election according to democratic criteria of being free and fair. Clearly, it was marred by many technical and political distortions, including vote-buying by individuals, insufficient transparency and independent oversight, some manipulation of ballots, and inconsistent participation by pro-state groups like voting soldiers.

The serious problem with the Jordanian election system -- like most others in this region -- is the built-in pro-government bias that comes from the way the electoral districts are drawn. Pro-state conservative rural districts have disproportionate power in cases where each MP represents less than 10,000 citizens, while in opposition strongholds like Amman and Zerqa each MP can represent 50,000 or more voters. The system is based on inequality among citizens, and is designed to return a pro-government majority every time, which it does very efficiently. Yet, about half the registered eligible voters actually voted. 

The real issue is: Why do the citizenry and opposition groups like the Muslim Brotherhood accept a manipulated participatory electoral system in which there is no real chance for a transfer of power to the opposition? Why does a citizenry with many legitimate economic and political grievances not boil over into open protest or mass demonstrations and revolt, as happened in many countries around the world (Iran, Philippines, Indonesia, Ukraine, Georgia, Poland, Czechoslovakia) in our generation?

I suspect the answer is that the nature and intensity of citizen grievances in Jordan are not as strong as the sense of security and personal opportunity that most people still feel they derive from their system of governance. Ordinary citizens walk out of their home every morning to work or school and weigh the assets and liabilities in their lives. Most Jordanians still feel that the good things in their country outweigh the bad things.

So they do not revolt, but instead they complain incessantly about corruption and inflation, they rail against America and Israel, but every four years they go out and vote for a parliament that they know will do nothing to change the status quo, other than to raise fuel prices. This is not the behavior of either evil tyrants or noble democrats, but rather the mundane predictability of decent people who define their citizenship mainly in terms of meeting their material and family needs, rather than in making political history. That task is for another generation that will soon make itself heard, while this generation sticks to the business of state-formation and family improvement.