Jordanians protest price hikes but in surprisingly small numbers
Although few people have been taking part in protests against price hikes in Jordan, analysts believe the public movement could still make a difference.
Jordanians are taking to the streets in protest of price hikes involving hundreds of essential goods, including bread, which came into effect at the beginning of February after parliament approved a controversial 2018 state budget. But unlike 2011, when Jordanians held large demonstrations across the kingdom calling for political reforms, this time the protests are few and far between. Every week following Friday prayers, small crowds would gather in downtown Amman, Salt, Kerak, Ma’an and Madaba calling on King Abdullah to sack the government and dissolve parliament. The protests are mostly peaceful, although there were confrontations with police forces in Kerak on Feb. 8 that led to a number of arrests.
But despite bitter attacks on the government’s economic policies by a number of Lower House deputies, Prime Minister Hani al-Mulki survived a no-confidence motion Feb. 18 submitted by the Islamist-led Al-Islah parliamentary bloc. The outcome of the vote is expected to increase public denunciation of both the government and parliament.
The government says the sales tax increase on essential goods and the lifting of bread subsidies are part of its agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to restructure the economy and reduce expenditures. In an interview with Jordan television on Feb. 13, Mulki said the country would have gone bankrupt had it not been for recent economic measures that saw subsidies lifted on several commodities. But he also blamed populist policies and unwise public spending by previous governments for the decline in economic performance. He said the economy would “exit the bottleneck by mid-2019.”
Mulki’s comments have failed to lift the public mood. On social media, Jordanians were skeptical of Mulki’s promise that their suffering would end by mid-2019. Some pointed to the fact that Jordan had been bowing to the IMF’s orders since the early 1990s. Others blamed the current conditions on the government’s inability to fight corruption and for relying solely on “citizens’ pockets” by levying and collecting taxes.
