The Middle Eastern King Who Is Not Afraid To Let His People Vote : Jordan: Alone among Arab nations, the kingdom’s move toward democracy is dynamic, but Bush can’t forget its support for Iraq during Gulf War.

Jordan keeps marching relentlessly toward democracy regardless of the Middle East’s ups and downs.

Last Sunday, a special conference endorsed a national charter that, for the first time since 1957, legalizes political parties. The 40-page document, while reaffirming the country’s monarchy, also expands some freedoms for women and the press.

A broad spectrum of Jordanians--from conservative military men to rightists in and out of government, from self-styled middle-of-the-roaders to Muslim Brotherhood fundamentalists and leftist extremists--now formally accept the inevitability of competing with one another for popular support.

The dynamism of Jordan’s thrust toward democracy places the country in a class by itself among Arab nations. Algeria’s experiment with democracy was interrupted this month when President Chadli Bendjedid postponed elections amid riots instigated by the Muslim Brotherhood. And Egypt--at the top of the U.S. aid list after Israel--only mimicked democracy with parliamentary elections last fall, which gave the usual overwhelming majority to Hosni Mubarak’s long-ruling National Democratic Party.

Not that Jordanian-style democracy will mean the kind of freedoms that the West tends to take for granted. King Hussein, who appointed the 60-member commission that drafted the charter, would probably like nothing better than the new Parliament, which must be elected by 1993, to reaffirm the seemingly liberal policies that he has been promoting for the past few years.

Hussein, however, has other reasons to hope that democracy will take root in Jordan. A Parliament dominated by centrist political parties could pay loud lip-service to the Palestinian cause--more than 40% of the country’s 3.5 million people regard themselves as Palestinian--while advocating whatever is needed to return the kingdom to the good graces of Washington and Riyadh. The king’s support of Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War cost him $55 million in U.S. aid and oil from King Fahd of Saudi Arabia.

A democracy under the influence of centrist parties would also help to keep the country’s political extremes in check. “There is no single party that can claim to possess truth” is how the king put it when signing the charter.

The extremists, however, see the polls as the quickest path to legitimacy and power. The Muslim Brotherhood--targets of police retaliation in most other Arab countries--are proven masters at exploiting Palestinian outrage and Islamic fundamentalism.

In Jordan’s first experiment at electoral democracy in November, 1989, Brotherhood members captured 22 of the 80 seats in Parliament. They can count on the support of another eight or so members. As a result, the Brotherhood controls more than one-third of Parliament’s seats, though the party won no more than 20% of the vote.

The key to the Brotherhood’s success is party discipline: It ran only 30 candidates, thus ensuring the Muslim vote would not be fragmented. Equally disciplined leftist parties, including Baathist Socialists and Communists, won eight seats with only 4% of the vote. Centrist parties ran 700 candidates, picking up at least three-quarters of the vote but only half the parliamentary seats.

Muslim Brotherhood members now talk democracy as if they are its inventors, but one has to wonder how loyal they are to political pluralism when a Brotherhood goal is to enact the fundamental precepts of Islam into law.

The Bortherhood’s most visible parliamentarian is Abdul Latif Arabiyat, who earned a doctorate in agriculture engineering from Texas A&M.; Last year, he successfully led a campaign to drive a centrist from the post of parliamentary speaker.

The relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood and the extremist group Hamas, now at the forefront of intifada violence, is especially worrisome. The Brotherhood says it does not supply arms to Hamas, but is not shy about proclaiming its moral and political support for the extremists. Hamas, which means enthusiasm or bravery, is the acronym of Harakat Muquwama Islamia or Islamic Resistance Movement. The group rejects any deal with Israel over the occupied territories and sees the Palestine Liberation Organization’s secularism as compromising.

The danger is that the cause of the Muslim Brotherhood--and the Hamas--may eventually dominate Jordanian politics and turn Parliament into a forum for radical Palestinian sentiment. The cost, as possibly in Algeria’s case, could be democracy itself.

Furthermore, such pressing issues as worker rights and academic and press freedoms would be neglected. Labor unions have existed in Jordan for a long time, but in a society plagued by 20% unemployment and 50% underemployment, they are unable to initiate a legal strike.

The government cedes control of universities to the academics, but seniority-minded rectors and deans, backed by student intimidators, do not hesitate to get rid of unpopular or obstreperous professors.

Newspapers are not formally censored, but editors seem to know what’s safely publishable. “Our support to Iraq was more vocal than practical,” recalled Al Dastour editor Mahmoud Sharif, defending not his paper but his king. “Our only crime was that we aired our thoughts.”

Concern for democratic principles is unlikely to deter the king if the extremists get out of hand. In March, the police arrested two of the sons of Sheik Assad Bayyoud Tamini, leader of the Islamic Jihad-Beit at Maqdes, confiscating some arms along with leaflets. They were released in a day or two, but the point was clear--treatment will get tougher if the Islamic Jihad continues to use Jordanian soil to wage war for the liberation of Palestine.

Under the circumstances, majority moderates sometimes talk as if they were running scared. “The Brotherhood is about 40 years old,” said Suleiman Arad, leader of the centrist National Front. “We are new, just a year and a half.” Still, “the center will dominate,” he predicts. “Our people are not fanatics.”

There is no small irony in Jordan’s bold experiment. The Bush Administration has turned the “new world order,” a major element of which is democracy, into a geopolitical slogan even as it strengthens ties to two dictators, the king of Saudi Arabia and the emir of Kuwait. Meanwhile, it doesn’t hesitate to remind Jordan, a new democracy, that it picked the wrong side in the war and must pay a penalty.

Fortunately, Jordan’s democrats so far appear to see beyond Washington’s myopia.