Sixth uprising in six months fells govt in Jordan

Jordan has joined the list of countries where the people no longer content themselves with the crumbs offered by parliamentary window-dressing, but walk out onto the streets in their thousands and tens of thousands in order to create better conditions of living for the working population.

Mass demonstrations were staged in the so-called Fourth District of Amman where the seat of the Prime Minister is and in provincial cities such as Irbid, Tafila, El Kerak, Er Ramsa and Maan every evening from May 31 all the way to June 7.

The movement scored some successes, the most spectacular being the virtual sacking of the government of Hani Mulki, the freezing of fuel price hikes and later the withdrawal of the controversial tax bill that was perhaps the major bone of contention. As a result of these concessions the demonstrations were finally called off on 8 June.

The target of the mass movement was the tax law that was sent by the government to parliament on 21 May. Actually, the public had been uneasy with the economic policy of the Mulki government since it had accepted an austerity budget at the beginning of the year, lifting subsidies on bread and imposing a sales tax on essential goods.

THE KING’S CUNNING POLICY

As head of the executive, King Abdullah II took what seems a very clever position from day one. However, this policy may turn on him and the entire political system in the medium term.

It was he who intervened early on, ordering the government to freeze the rise in the price of fuel. He also criticised the government for not heeding the worries of the population regarding the IMF-imposed tax law, asserting that it was inequitable to expect ordinary people to bear the burden of the necessary readjustment of the economy, a most unusual statement coming from a top leader of a bourgeois executive.

It was probably on the force of these positive openings by the King that the police took an extremely careful attitude vis-a-vis the demonstrators, preventing them from reaching the PM’s office, but doing this with great care so as not to cause excessive violence. In the end, it was the King who asked to see Prime Minister Mulki on 4 June and is believed to “ask him for his resignation”, which is but a polite way of sacking him and his government. After Mulki turned in his resignation, the king declared that he had always stood by his people and will always do so.

Empty rhetoric that aimed at putting out a wildfire that was unprecedented in the history of this small but important kingdom of the Middle East, an indispensible ally of the US and one of the very few Arab countries that recognises Zionist Israel.

This policy of the King will probably backfire in the medium term, since the fundamental problems besetting the Jordanian economy and society remain as urgent as before.

The attempt of the previous government, aided and abetted by the IMF, to lay the burden of the impasse of Jordanian capitalism, sharpened by the influx of Syrian refugees on a mass scale, on the shoulders of the working people of the country has now been defeated under the pressure of the masses.

WHERE DOES THE MOVEMENT STAND?

There is no doubt that the demonstrations in Amman and other cities came nowhere near the revolutionary mood and action of the Tunisian and Egyptian masses in 2011, the two foremost instances of the spectacular revolutionary wave that shook the Arab world between 2011-2013.

It is more akin to the popular rebellions of the kind one had, for instance, in Turkey and Brazil in 2013. The movement was nonetheless a real challenge to the existing order of things in a country where the parliament is more a façade than a powerful reality and where democratic traditions are almost non-existent.

The Jordanian masses have now tasted the feeling of victory over a government, having brought one down in the space of less than a week. Perhaps even more importantly, the almost leaderless movement persisted in demonstrating even after the government fell. This is remarkable, since during the first five days, the central demand was the sacking of the government. This central watch word was instantly altered to that demanding the dissolution of parliament.

It is important to point out that Jordan is the sixth country to develop a mass movement of revolt against the economic and political conditions currently existing. This is what we had written in the immediate aftermath of the rebellion in Armenia in April and May:

“The Armenian uprising is the fifth such people’s mass movement since the beginning of 2018, in other words in the last five months. The year opened with Iran, a neighbour of Armenia. The fire then spread to Tunisia. Next in line was Romania, reacting against corruption. Then came Slovakia, in response to the killing of a journalist and his girlfriend. And now Armenia.”

After Iran, Tunisia, Slovakia, Romania, and Armenia, Jordan has now joined the host of countries where a mass rebellion erupted in the course of the first six months of 2018. All of these countries are placed towards the centre of the Eurasian land mass, i.e. central and east Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, the Caucasus, and the Mediterranean basin.

This is the epicentre of the earlier revolutionary wave of 2011-2013. There can be no doubt that we have not left behind that revolutionary wave. In countries where the political system is less receptive to the mood of the masses partial and brief episodes of mass eruption point to the surreptitious burning of the flame. The mythical mole of Karl Marx is digging and digging.

(Edited excerpts from a longer essay that first appeared in redmed.org and newsclick.in. Sungur Savran is a Marxist economist based in Istanbul, Turkey)