10 September 1999
Letter from the Levant
Ruminations about the making, and breaking, of press laws
Once again Jordanian legislators find themselves debating and passing a new press law, the third in the past six years or so. And once again the law is hailed and denounced by people from all shades of the political prism. Some find it representing a great liberal leap into the fray of the country’s democratic arena while others damn it for failing to break through the traditional restrictions that prevent a free and thriving press from flourishing in Jordan.
I once told a fellow journalist that Jordan’s main exports are phosphates and press laws! Since the country found itself on the road towards democratization, it has been trying to forge a localized formula to regulate the Jordanian press while containing its anticipated ills. With the established benchmark being the 1993 liberal press law, any latter legislation had fallen short in public eye. Liberal laws are abolished by governments because they are, well, liberal. The anti-thesis of the process of recalling a law “for consultation”, is a more tempered code—a bit conservative reflecting government’s thinking rather than public mentality and wishes.
So as Jordan went into its second and third press laws, the synthesis of this process became a hybrid of various laws, mentalities, approaches and schools—in short a freak!
Jordanians, like most citizens of the world, have a short-lived attention span. An issue becomes an issue only because the media and/or the government make it one. So in this case the latest attempt at forging a press law has failed to grab public attention because the government was not about to get dragged into a battle over press freedoms. This is compared to the government’s decision few weeks ago to slice customs duty on cars, an initiative that became household topic instantly and remain so to this day.
Jordanians also forget that the press law and indeed other public liberty laws are a product of a certain phase. In 1993 a liberal parliament passed a number of liberal laws because we had a government that thought it was liberal too. But today, ten years after democratization began, the process is in limbo. The challenge is with the democratic process itself rather than this or that press law. The democratic environment that produced the first set of liberal laws has receded and there you have it. We scrutinize laws today, when we have to, only when they affect our lives--collectively. The press law, which is an improvement of the old one, fails in many ways only because we look at it with the 1993 era in mind. That’s unfair because today’s realities are different from those of six years ago.
Which brings us to Jordan’s democratic transition, a bold experiment that has had its ups and downs. Ten years after the transition began Jordanians find themselves somewhere between the starting point and the furthest point that they had reached at one phase or another. That’s not saying much. There are two ways to look at this. One is to say that we have failed and that what we need now is to reverse the regression; and second to congratulate ourselves for still having a process that is described as democratic.
Democracy, Jordanian style, is a living creature reflecting the political, economic and social realities of today. The regression, which began sometime in 1995, was the outcome of the realities of that particular moment in time; the peace process, the economic hardship, the regional challenges, Iraq..etc. If we are today pushing forward again, then this is a positive sign signaling progression once more. But with very little historical experience how are we to assume that we are again moving in the right direction?
Jordan’s democratic experiment is just that; an experiment that tries to draw on local, regional and global experiences. We now know, for instance, that our society and the nature of our political system cannot accept, and therefore incorporate, an imported western-style democratic system. If that is the definition of a fully-mature democratic system, then we are still lagging behind. But compare our budding democratic system to systems of governance and public participation in local government in neighboring countries and you have a positive impression indeed.
That is not to say that we quite know what we’re doing. To be totally honest we don’t. The intent to democratize is there and has been with us for sometime. That alone has made it possible for press laws to be recalled and reinvented again and again. Jordanians should at least be thankful that the process of correcting the democratic experiment is ongoing. The transition is there and the signs are encouraging.
The press law, like any law, is there to withstand the test of application and implementation. The process of sharing power with the government has not stopped. We are still far from having a government that is truly for the people and by the people. Isn’t this a basic tenet of democracy? But just like the old press laws that were recalled because they were archaic and arbitrary, the basic definition of government may soon withstand the test.
It is unfair to assume that people are not interested in a modern and forward-looking press law simply because public interest in the issue was lacking. The Jordanian press has lost much of its zest in the past few years and is in dire need of internal reform. Market forces have made survival an even tougher game for many newspapers. Press laws don’t change all that. In fact by the time Jordanians finally manage to perfect a press law they may realize that it is no longer needed!