US embassy cable - 05AMMAN8422

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 AMMAN 008422 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR NEA, NEA/PPD, PASS TO DOL-ILAB; LONDON FOR TSOU 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/26/2010 
TAGS: ELAB, KDEM, KPAO, PGOV, JO 
SUBJECT: BEGINNING THE FIGHT OVER PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS 
 
REF: A. AMMAN 7979 
 
     B. AMMAN 2251 
 
Classified By: DCM Daniel Rubinstein, Reasons 1.4 (B) & (D) 
 
1. (C) Summary:  Deputy PM Marwan Muasher, chairman of the 
Royal Commission for the National Agenda (the centerpiece of 
King Abdullah's reform efforts), recently announced that the 
commission's report will include a recommendation that 
membership in the Jordan Press Association (JPA) become 
voluntary instead of mandatory.  The current system of 
mandatory membership strengthens the unrepresentative 
leadership of the association and allows them to influence 
Jordanian media.  The JPA's reaction to this reform-oriented 
proposal was predictably shrill; Jordan's other professional 
associations, suspecting they may be next, joined in 
denouncing the proposal.  Ominously for reform advocates, the 
leaders of both houses of parliament also denounced the 
proposal.  This conflict may be indicative of likely fights 
over liberalization that will arise in the coming months, as 
Jordanian decision-makers consider the draft National Agenda 
reforms.  END SUMMARY. 
 
2. (C) NOTE: Jordan's professional associations currently 
wield considerable influence in their fields, due largely to 
laws that make dues-paying membership mandatory for 
journalists, lawyers, doctors, engineers, and others.  Anyone 
wishing to officially practice one of these professions must 
be officially recognized in his or her chosen field, and that 
official recognition flows from membership in the relevant 
association.  Any editor-in-chief of a paper, for example, 
must be an officially recognized journalist, and therefore a 
member of the JPA.  Through housing plans, scholarship funds, 
and peer pressure, these associations also command the 
loyalty of rank-and-file members, particularly junior 
professionals.  Senior journalists and editors complain that 
the JPA's leaders are chosen through opaque processes 
(including faxes to editors with recommended candidates for 
JPA positions from Jordanian security services) and that they 
do not pay enough attention to serious professional concerns. 
 Association leaders are also rumored to report on members to 
the security services, and to benefit from the services, 
support in return.   END NOTE. 
 
3. (C) These professional associations have long been 
reliably anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-normalization, and 
anti-reform (ref B).  Internal regulations are biased against 
those who have worked outside of Jordan, even those who have 
worked for highly respected international news agencies.  The 
associations set limits to official interaction between 
association members and international organizations; contacts 
with foreign (non-Arab or non-UN) organizations are 
discouraged.  For example, the JPA, like other professional 
associations, has boycotted meetings with official Americans 
since its foundation in the 1950,s.  After numerous heated 
debates, the JPA's president and executive committee 
convinced the membership to allow them to meet with the new 
PAO soon after his arrival this July.  Following this 
courtesy call, other members of the board publicly and 
angrily denounced the meeting as a step toward allowing 
"foreign capitalist normalizers" to control Jordan's media. 
This reflects what the JPA sees as its main role, as 
described at the Global Forum for Media Development (October 
1 ) 3, 2005), which is to protect Jordanian readers and 
journalists from the excesses and irresponsibility of 
nefarious capitalist-controlled foreign forces.  An 
influential journalist opposed to the JPA speaking at the 
GFMD summed it up best by referring to "paranoid Soviet-style 
control." 
 
4. (C) The JPA is fighting hard to maintain obligatory 
membership as a method of controlling journalism in Jordan, 
and of maintaining its own influence.  DPM Muasher's 
statement that the National Agenda report will recommend 
ending obligatory membership in the JPA triggered immediate 
and shrill reactions.  (Ref A provides a preview of other 
expected National Agenda recommendations.)  JPA organized a 
peaceful demonstration in front of the Prime Ministry which 
(not surprisingly) got significant media coverage.  The JPA 
has also engineered public statements of support by 
sympathetic legislators, including the heads of both houses 
of Parliament.  At the same time, in a potentially (and 
uncharacteristically) positive move, association leaders 
publicly announced the formation of a committee to update and 
reform internal regulations.  This committee plans to allow 
journalists who have worked overseas for major international 
media to count that experience toward establishing 
professional journalist status in Jordan ) a small step 
toward openness to outside influences. 
 
5. (C) Editorialists and senior journalists who oppose the 
JPA and obligatory membership argue that such reforms should 
have taken place years ago.  They say they have little or 
nothing to show from the JPA over the past fifty years. 
These senior professionals - supported by reformers in the 
government and by international advocates for a free and 
independent press - argue that obligatory membership in 
professional associations such as the JPA should be a thing 
of the past, that it impinges on freedom of association, and 
that it hinders the full development of the media in Jordan. 
They decry the JPA's opaque and complicated membership rules, 
which severely limit those who can be officially recognized 
as journalists.  Local International Labor Organization 
Representative Rashid Khedim, told PolOff this is an issue of 
freedom of association; membership in any trade or 
professional union should be optional.  ILO is hailing the 
royal commission's stand against obligatory membership in the 
JPA.  International media rights groups present at the GFMD 
also made impassioned pleas for the JPA not to oppose this 
proposed reform, noting how unexpected and unwelcome it was 
to hear journalists arguing against a government's efforts to 
remove controls over journalists. 
 
6. (C) Comment:  However the JPA battle eventually ends, this 
recommendation is considered a shot across the bow of all the 
professional associations.  Muasher denies that the National 
Agenda commission or the government has any plan to repeal 
laws requiring membership in the other professional 
associations.  However, it is no secret that the Palace views 
the associations as an obstacle to reform; ending obligatory 
membership would weaken these critics of GOJ reform efforts 
(and foreign policy) considerably.  As senior editorialist 
Ibrahim Gharaybed wrote in the independent and influential 
daily Al-Ghad, the end of obligatory membership in the JPA 
"constitutes an opportunity for the government to stand up to 
the other associations and cancel obligatory membership in 
those as well.  The Jordan Press Association was first in 
line because it is the weakest."  Leaders of other 
professional associations and their anti-reform allies 
understand this clearly, and are mobilizing to fight the 
change.  END COMMENT. 
 
 
 
HALE