King Abdullah renews confidence in al-Rawabdeh government
Jordan, Politics, 4/19/2000

King Abdullah II of Jordan has not settled the battle between the government and the parliament in the interest of either of the two sides, on the background of the demand raised by 50 Jordanian parliament members to remove the prime minister, Abdul Raouf al-Rawabdeh, and his team last week, but it seemed that the king left the door open for a government reshuffle in the next three months.

Jordanian parliamentary sources told the Lebanese daily al-Nahar that the Jordanian king, who received Jordanian Parliament Speaker Abdul Hadi al-Majali, on Tuesday and received from him the parliamentary message which focused on the deteriorated political and economic conditions in the country and the failure of the government in withstanding these conditions, showed good understanding of the justifications of the message and the intentions of the parliamentarians to change the government.

The king asked the parliamentarians to postpone their demand until economic legislation listed on the agenda of the Cabinet's extraordinary session due to start in the middle of May, especially the privatization draft bill which the World Bank asked Jordan to approve before July this year, is considered.

The king stressed confidence in his government and called on it as he chaired a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday to "concentrate in this phase and basically on raising the living standards of the Jordanians and improving their economic conditions."

He said, "We are partners to achieving this goas and in shouldering the responsibility, not only the government but also the three authorities and also the private sector," adding that he realizes "the great tasks assigned to members of the parliament in this phase in order to finalize legislation that complies with the efforts made to attract investments to Jordan in order to attain the appropriate growth rates."

On Saturday the public statistics department in Jordan said that the economic growth average reached 1.8% in 1999, representing a recession in regard to the percentage of 1998, while population growth increased to 3% which means that the economic growth in Jordan is negative.

Observers in Amman say that the king chose to contain the crisis temporarily between the government and the parliamentarians and to postpone it until the extraordinary session of the Cabinet in order to avoid conflict in a stage which requires collaboration to accelerate economic growth and prepare "healthy" conditions for convening the meetings of the Inter-Parliamentary Union which will start in Amman on April 30.

The observers noted that al-Rawabdeh has become convinced that the change will target his government within the two coming months, and they indicated that by saying that al-Rawabdeh implicitly appealed to the king on Tuesday to keep his government as long as possible when saying, "We have completed all that we could, but we, at the same time, believe that the way is long and responsibilities are big."

The crisis started between the parliamentarians and the government on February 24 when 55 parliament members called for the implementation of the Islamic Sharia. The parliamentarians later gave up their demand.

Previous Stories:
  King Abdullah to decide today on the parliament's request to change government   (4/17/2000)
  Chretien in Amman today   (4/14/2000)
  Jordanian parliamentary majority calls for resignation of al-Rawabdeh government   (4/14/2000)

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