Tag Archives: Transparency

“Every morning I get up and thank God that he never made me an expert on the Middle East,” a famous journalist once remarked to me. That was pretty much my view, too. As a journalist and later as a politician, I generally steered a wide circle around matters Middle Eastern for the very good reason that reform seemed a lost cause. The overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the Arab spring have changed that.  A narrow window has opened in countries with little or no living memory of democracy and which in most cases do not have properly functioning parliaments.  For this reason I recently found myself on the Jordanian side of the Dead Sea at a conference organised by Global Partners for MPs from Jordan, Iraq and Egypt. Object of exercise: to share insights and experiences of parliament with particular reference to the standards expected of elected representatives and the level of service they should be expected to offer their constituents. The participants were for the most part sophisticated, capable politicians, whose skills would see them easily adapt to life in a well-established parliament such as Westminster, Ottawa or Paris, but alas a wide gulf separates those worlds. Iraqi MPs, with the notable exception of those from Kurdistan, are mainly confined to the so-called Green Zone, the heavily fortified administrative bloc in the centre of Baghdad.  He or she can only venture out with armed bodyguards and even then the risks are high.  Only recently an Iraqi MP attending a function outside the Green Zone was embraced by a stranger who sung God’s praises – and then blew them both to smithereens.  One cannot but admire people who put themselves up for election in these circumstances. Egypt remains in turmoil.  Parliamentary elections are due in the coming months, but already there is talk of an opposition boycott.   Citizens have unrealistic expectations of what they can expect from their MPs – decades of pent up demands have suddenly been unleashed and one task of any elected representative will be to dampen expectations. And Jordan is trying to establish parliamentary democracy in a very tough neighbourhood.  Syria, Iraq and Israel are its immediate neighbours. None of these countries have a long-term history of multi-party democracy or governments that can be held to account.  The concept of a loyal opposition is unknown. All of which suggests that the learning curve will be steep, progress will be slow and there are likely to be disappointments along the way.  Hopefully, however, a few seeds were sown which, in due course, may turn into green shoots. Chris Mullin is a former minister. He was a British member of parliament from 1987 to 2010