One of the talents that the Hashemite dynasty in Jordan has consistently displayed is a deft sense of timing. This allowed king Abdallah's father King Hussein to laugh at the prognosticators who predicted his demise as early as the 1960s. Hussein knew when to bend, then bide his time till the moment was opportune to recoup his powers.
As a boy of 18, Hussein had to get a handle on the anti-western mood sweeping the Arab world including Jordan in 1956 following the abortive Suez campaign. Hussein fired the legendary British commander of the Jordanian Arab Legion, John Bagot Glubb Pasha, and installed a Palestinian Prime Minister known for his sympathies for Nasser's Egypt.
In 1958 he was strong enough to undo this with British backing and tacit Israeli acquiescence to having British planes and forces cross Israeli aerospace and back up Hussein's dismissal of the problematic cabinet that he had been forced to appoint.
Similarly, after the Six-Day War, when traditional Arab leaders had been discredited by their defeat, Hussein found himself with a Palestinian state-within-a-state in Jordan headed by Yasser Arafat. Again, Hussein waited for the opportune moment. That came in September 1970 (Black September for the Palestinians), when he smashed Arafat's power base and sent him packing to Lebanon.
There is a new sense of momentum and inevitability sweeping the Arab world. Despite appearances, today's force may be stronger than in 1956 or 1968. For one thing, there are now television satellite dishes, and the Jordanian population is more educated. On the other hand, the Hashemite monarchy is more entrenched, and Abdallah commands popularity that puts him a cut above Egypt's Mubarak and Tunisia's Ben Ali.
One can infer this from the difference in tactics adopted by the Islamic Action Front, which is the Jordanian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, and its leader Hamzeh Mansur.
Mansur distinguished the demands of the Jordanian protesters from those in Egypt ""There is no comparison between Egypt and Jordan...The people there demand a regime change, but here we ask for political reforms and an elected government."
The Islamic Action Front is being ingenuous here. They have also called for constitutional amendments to curb the king's power in naming heads of government, arguing that the premiership should go to the leader of the majority in parliament. This means that King Abdallah can stay, but his status will now be a constitutional monarch under a parliamentary system, something akin to Queen Elizabeth and the Scandinavian monarchs.
At present, he is above the presidential systems in France and Russia, where the executive appoints the prime minister who must also receive the support of the legislative branch. The president in France and Russia must get elected, while Jordan is an hereditary monarchy.
In a pure parliamentary system, the Prime Minister can reshuffle his cabinet. In presidential systems with a Prime Minister, and presuming the president's party commands a majority in the legislature, the cabinet reshuffle can take place from the top-down, beginning with the Prime Minister.
The Brotherhood presumably would also like a change to either proportional representation or redistricting that is not controlled by the palace. In Jordanian elections, the districts were drawn to over-represent rural areas where the Islamic Front is weaker, and to minimize its bastions in the cities.
From its point of view the Islamic Action Front is quite correct in viewing the new Prime MinisterMarouf al-Bakhit as another henchman of the King. After all he served as prime minister from 2005-2007. It is doubtful that Abdallah's mandate to the prime minister designates "a real political reform process that reflects our vision of comprehensive reform, modernisation and development."
"Such a process should enable us to proceed with confidence along the path of bolstering democracy and building the nation that will open the door wide for achievement by all our dear people," and will result in the changes that the Islamic front desires.
The British Telegraph's foreign editor Con Coughlin has expressed his skepticism that this will be enough given today's climate. Abdallah is convinced that what worked for his father and for himself on previous occasions will work again today.
One of them is going to be proven wrong.