I will not replace their name in the headline with the new name they have chosen. The issue runs deeper than a change of name, although the new name is a sign of a deeper project, and I do not know how they were allowed to use it. My article is also broader than a new label can capture. The real question is not what their name has become, but what has changed in their project, approach and tools?
اضافة اعلان
Since the last parliamentary elections, in which they won a significant number of votes and seats, surpassing all the other parties and those further behind, it has been clear that the Jordanian political scene was heading for major changes. But what happened this week, with the new session of the House of Representatives beginning, the election of a new speaker with difficulty, and the formation of a new permanent bureau outside the existing understandings, shows that the story did not end at the ballot box, and that what is happening inside the dome goes beyond the traditional competition for positions and posts.
They have gone beyond many calculations, leaving political parties looking on in bewilderment, before returning to the front of events, as if no one is paying attention to the nature of their moves or reading their implications and the effects they may leave.
The political earthquakes and aftershocks we have seen within parties, understandings and alliances deserve a long pause. I am convinced that some people are skilled at exploiting these aftershocks, and perhaps at engineering some of them, to disrupt the scene and weaken others. In some calculations, demolition and the disruption of rival political projects may be a way to clear the path for their own project.
While parties are busy competing for posts and positions, receiving congratulations, and some are living through crises of resignations, appeals, divisions and accusations of treachery, there are those watching the scene as if saying: we will flip the table. My message here is: beware of them!
More dangerous still is that this scene comes at a time when His Majesty the King, in his speech minutes before their internal elections began, pointed out that behaviour and practices inside the dome are part of the wider national scene, not a parliamentary detail isolated from the state's path and its political and reform project.
Did they heed the King's words? Who will stop these tremors before they become greater aftershocks? And who will restore to the parties their ability to confront politics in a conscious and organised way?
One of the reasons for failure in this confrontation is the continued trust in individuals who care only about their interests, positions and personal gains, and who do not see parties as national projects for growth, development and building.
We are not against political competition, nor against the right of any current to participate and be represented. But we are against turning party life into an arena for maneuvering at the expense of the national project, and against meeting mistakes with courtesies and reproaches while their effects spread and their consequences grow.
Be careful: changing a name does not necessarily mean changing an approach, politics is not run by reproach, and national projects are not protected by courtesies. Whoever leaves the table to others while preoccupied with small interests may one day wake up to find that others have rearranged the entire scene, and that he no longer even has the right to object.
