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Jordansk samfundskritik
Jeg har tidligere (mange gange) afvist den primitive afvisning af den arabiske verden som "tilbagestående" udbredt i fremmedfjendske kredse, ikke mindst, fordi diktaturerne i den arabiske verden (som f.eks. i Ægypten eller Saudi-Arabien) ofte fungerer i allerbedste forståelse med netop Danmarks nærmeste allierede i den "oplyste" vestlige verden.
Hermed selvsagt ikke være sagt, at alt står godt til i den del af verden - blot at problemerne og deres årsager ikke kan reduceres til Mogens Camres-planet.
En nærmere analyse af, hvad der rent faktisk er galt i et land som f.eks. Jordan leverer Nas fra The Black Iris of Jordan i en som altid skarp (og deprimerende) analyse:
Let’s say for example, you have some sort of government-related procedure involving a lot of bureaucratic paperwork that needs to get done. You will be forced from department to department, from ministry to ministry. Everyone says “you’re in the wrong place, so and so is in charge of that”. But so-and-so tells you to go elsewhere.Og resultatet af denne mentalitets breden sig ud over det hele?
You end up wasting an entire week due to bad directions. Eventually you find a short old guy in a dusty office, in the corner of some ministry, who is “in charge” of whatever it is you need to get done. He’ll probably give you a list of all the other places you need to visit to collect a series of signatures and stamps; philately has never been so fun.
Even on this level, it is apparent that the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.
From the moment the King makes a decision, it will get passed down the chain to various players. And it’s very much like a rumor that will start with one person, but by the time it gets to the last person in the chain, it’s completely different. Completely broken.
There is a breakdown in communication and one needs to only look at the way the most basic government employee operates in the most basic government-environment (such as a department or ministry), to understand the broken mechanism at play.
Would things be easier if the entire government was military? Just a bunch of soldiers following direct orders like their life depended on it, instead of aged-politicians with ancient-agendas?
I don’t know.
What I do know is that the Bakhit government has been the worse Jordanian government that I have ever had the misfortune of experiencing.
The sound of one hand clapping:
The gap between the poor and the rich has increased to the point where you can see it as clear as day and night. The government has done little about that. Media reform is all but dead with the sad, sad demise of ATV, the first private Jordanian news channel. The government saw to that. Then of course we had a politician jailed. The government was responsible for that. Our corruption levels are up. Municipal elections were a joke that included a disposed opposition party and a government rigging the results. We’ve had several public health scares, that instead of being contained, were mishandled enormously. The GID (or mukhabarat [det hemmelige politi]) have never enjoyed such free exercise of authority. Inflation is on the rise. Still more honor killings; still no law.Korrupte, postkoloniale strukturer? Generel tilsanding i et samfund præget af trægt bureaukrati i den ene ende og rivende økonomisk udvikling og indvikling i den anden?
And this is just touching the surface; barely.
Et spørgsmål, det er nemmere at stille end at svare på - men, som sagt, protesten mod den skrigosfæriske forsimpling af tingene bør naturligvis ikke til at få nogen til at antage en ikke eksisterende blindhed for tingenes faktisk (og af vore egne allierede understøttede) tilstand i den del af verden.