During a meeting a couple of days ago a well known Jordanian commentator explained to me that, contrary to the opinions of some US diplomats in Amman, Jordanian interior minister Nayef Qadi was a reformist figure. I did not comment at the time as frankly I did not have enough information on Qadi, beyond the fact that he has served in several Jordanian governments and was responsible – under instructions – for presiding over the expulsion of Hamas leaders from Jordan in the late 1990s.
But after reading Qadi’s attacks on the Jordanian press in today’s papers he certainly does not appear to be pushing the boundaries of reform, but rather resembles a typical example of the old guard of Arab officials (and most of the new for that matter) who are simply unable to countenance any form of criticism.
In this case, Qadi’s beef with the media relates to the coverage of the recent actions by the kingdom’s security forces towards striking workers in the port of Aqaba. The Jordanian media generally took the side of the workers and accused the security forces - and by extension the interior minister himself - of heavy handed tactics in dealing with the dispute, which left several striking workers injured and others detained. Qadi accused the media of only reporting one side of the story, claiming that the protesters threw stones at the security forces and threatened the families of other workers. This may or may not be true, but no evidence was presented to back up the claim.
But rather strangely and frankly quite comically, Qadi then proceeded to stray into the realms of conspiracy theories and launched a general and rather muddled attack on the media – tame at the best of times - by accusing some journalists of being “ agents of foreign agendas” and of “accepting funding from suspicious foreign parties”. Mmmn… Who might these foreign parties be I wonder? Maybe the same ones that the government readily takes money (read: begs)from every year to shore up the budget? Of course, he didn’t say, that would require actually presenting some evidence to back up the accusations.
The “agents of foreign agendas” theme is a a rather tired and common method, not just in Jordan but throughout the Arab world, of attempting to silence criticism of governments and officials. The region’s leaders would prefer journalists to function in the same manner as the Arab poets of old, extolling the virtues of the tribe and its leaders – or in this case the government and its ministers – and follow the example of arguably the greatest Arab poet in the panegyric genre, al-Mutanabbi (10th Century). This line of thinking can be clearly discerned in Qadi’s comments to the media yesterday, particularly this one when he called on the media to:
“‘Stop receiving "instructions from outside the country’, urging them to defend the nation's interests and political stands’ ... and avoid "negative" practices including inaccuracy and biased reporting’. “
Well, it's not really the function of the media to “defend the nation’s interests and political stands”, but rather to examine the policies and practices of the government – including towards striking workers – and assess whether or not these policies are conducive to the public interest and serve the good of the country. The function of the media – to quote the Israeli journalist Amira Hass – is precisely to “monitor the centres of power”. In terms of the so-called ‘negative practices’, what the minister is referring to is usually a direct consequence of the government’s refusal, or inability, to deliver accurate and timely information to journalists. Access to information and the poor institutional capacity of governmental departments are among the main obstacles hindering journalists from pursuing their trade in Jordan.
Although Qadi qualified his remarks by stating that this would not result in any restrictions on the media, the fact that his comments are characteristic of a mindset throughout the Arab world that regards any form of criticism as a personal attack. Only last month the Palestinian Authority banned al-Jazeera from operating in the West Bank following the broadcasting of remarks by Farouk Kaddoumi – the secretary general of Fatah’s central committee, alleging that Mahmoud Abbas and Mohammad Dahlan plotted with Israeli officials to murder Yasser Arafat. Instead of challenging Kaddoumi to produce his evidence, Fatah responded by banning al-Jazeera, by far the most popular and trusted news source in the Arab world.
Likewise, instead of leveling vague accusations at the Jordanian media for its coverage of the port workers strike in Aqaba, and veering into the realms of fantasy, why didn’t Qadi do the sensible thing and challenge the media’s coverage in an op-ed outlining the government’s version of events and countering the media’s criticism point-by-point? Such an approach would not only have increased the levels of accountability and transparency in government decision-making, but would also have furthered the so-called reform agenda and a culture of open debate.
