By RANA F. SWEIS MARCH 6, 2013

AMMAN — As the sun rises over the Jordanian capital, the problems of the day start to stream in to Radio Fann. In the studio, producers scramble to keep up with calls and e-mails from listeners complaining about issues like water shortages and bureaucratic failures.

In a country where the news media are traditionally hemmed in by authoritarian legislation and self-censorship, such call-in shows are now able to address political topics and human rights issues that were unmentionable in public before the Arab Spring.

Hani al Badri, 45, is host of Wasat al-Balad, a two-and-a-half-hour live broadcast for people who find nowhere else to turn. The producers not only field their calls; they ring government officials on-air to try to resolve the issues raised.

“The show has two main roles,” said Mr. Badri, who also writes a newspaper column in Al Ghad, an independent daily. The radio show is “a platform for freedom of speech, but it’s also a place where Jordanians expect their problems to be solved.”

The morning talk shows are popular in a country where local municipalities are weighed down by bloated bureaucracies and inadequate budgets, despite a plan in 2005 to increase their efficiency.

Even this week, public workers across the kingdom have been on strike demanding better pay and benefits. And although more people than expected voted in parliamentary elections last month, Jordanians weary of fuel price increases are bracing for more economic hardship this year.

With a population of just over six million, Jordan is a relatively poor country with almost 14 percent of its people living below the poverty line, according to the Department of Statistics.

“There is a lack of accountability by public officials,” Mr. Badri said, “so we bring them on the show and present them with a clear problem at a specific location. We try to solve the caller’s problem on the spot, if we can.”

Still, some Jordanians have accused the radio hosts of courting acclaim by publicly highlighting the government’s failures to provide basic services, Mr. Badri said. And sometimes, government officials would rather avoid dealing with the media, although over time they have come to appreciate the opportunity to present the government’s views to a wider audience, he added.

On Jan. 14, Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour met with directors of Jordan’s radio stations and presenters. Mr. Badri, who attended the meeting, said he took the opportunity to share a few of the concerns of his listeners: Whether to cancel the test that determines whether a student can attend university; what the repercussions will be of the prime minister’s decision to keep daylight saving time in force throughout the winter.

Daoud Kuttab, the founder and general manager of Radio Balad and AmmanNet, the first online community radio station, said radio had significant influence in Jordan. “Radio is extremely accessible and it is a democratic instrument,” he said. “You can listen to the radio at home, in the car or on your phone and anybody can call in. It is available 24 hours a day and it is free of charge.”

In 2002, the Jordanian government approved a law that ended its monopoly on broadcasting, resulting in the licensing of dozens of privately owned radio stations.

Still, “the media scene in Jordan, as it is in many Arab countries, is dominated by government-owned media,” Mr. Kuttab said. “For many years the government had a monopoly in media and in many ways they still do.”

Radio Fann, for example, is still owned by the Jordanian armed forces. Another, Amen FM, is owned by the police. Before the Arab Spring, most radio stations played primarily music.

AmmanNet, an independent station, changed the format of its morning show — “Tallet Subeh,” which means “Morning Glimpse” — from trying to solve social problems to building political and social awareness by profiling political candidates or analyzing new laws.

“Our show is now less service-oriented because we found the long-term impact is limited,” Mr. Kuttab said. “There needs to be institutional changes and obviously the popularity of these morning talk shows continues to reveal flaws in the system.”

One reason Mr. Badri’s radio show succeeds is his willingness to discuss issues that have a direct impact on listeners’ daily lives.

On a recent program, for example, he discussed the price of cooking gas cylinders which has increased 50 percent since the government cut public subsidies three months ago.

Callers have also complained about traffic violations and the cost of real estate. Others call to weigh in on current events.

Humor and Arabic pop songs are used to lighten long discussions as Jordanians make their way to work or school. In between conversations, a D.J. chooses lyrics from Arabic pop songs that echo complaints from listeners. When a caller said he felt neglected by the government, the background music was a love song about abandonment.

“When the show first began, we told government officials that it’s better they respond to caller requests and go on the record,” said Mr. Badri, who hosted the show for nearly a year. “Some officials now realize the power of the media because ordinary citizens have found an outlet to hold them accountable.”

Mr. Badri said he worried less about censorship these days, and more about the lack of access to information the public has a right to know.

“For now we will continue to put pressure on officials,” he said, “and talk about taboo issues as well.”

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By RANA F. SWEIS

AMMAN — The political turmoil in the Middle East over the last two years has not been kind to Jordan’s king, Abdullah II, who has faced domestic protests and public discontent.

Still, the king scored a tactical victory over his most serious political challenger, the Muslim Brotherhood, in last week’s elections for the lower house of Parliament. Voters largely ignored the Brotherhood’s call for an election boycott, an outcome that appeared to offer respite to the beleaguered monarchy.

Instead of being a nonevent, the elections produced a 56 percent turnout, nearly four percentage points higher than the 2010 parliamentary elections.

The high participation followed promises by Abdullah to consult Parliament, for the first time, in choosing a new prime minister. Jordanians hope this will lead to a more open political system.

“The Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan have been dealt a blow,” said Osama Rantesi, deputy chief editor and political columnist at Arab Al Yawm, an independent daily newspaper. “Protesters coming out in their support have been decreasing, their rhetoric seems less appealing two years after the Arab Spring.”

Jordan’s election results coincided with a wave of deadly violence in Egypt, which is led by a Muslim Brotherhood veteran, President Mohamed Morsi, as that country marked the second anniversary of the start of the protests that forced Hosni Mubarak to step down as president.

Revolutions that began in Tunisia in December 2010 and spread across the Middle East have also inspired small but persistent protests and labor strikes in Jordan. The chaos and violence in neighboring countries have dampened the debate about reform and the protests in Jordan. Last year, there were fears of serious political upheaval. Opposition leaders have held back for fear that change might be worse than an unsatisfactory status quo.

“Jordanians think change in the region right now means chaos, instability, civil war and destruction — they are asking, ‘Is there any other way?”’ said Oraib al-Rantawi, director of Al-Quds Center for Political Studies.

Two days after the elections, the Muslim Brotherhood canceled a planned protest without explanation. The movement still insists that it has not suffered a setback and that the turnout figures, along with the whole voting procedure, were rigged.

“This is a fabricated election process because the electoral law itself is flawed and we were right in boycotting the elections,” said Murad Adayleh, an executive committee member of the Islamic Action Front, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. “We will continue on the same path of protesting peacefully until our demands for a more representative government is met and against widespread corruption.”

Despite these claims, it seems clear that the Jordanian government, which offered a package of constitutional changes in response to opposition demands, has won some breathing room.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week, Abdullah described the election turnout as a success and said the next step would be to build political parties, based on political positions, to compete in future elections.

He also promised to reach out to the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan but claimed that the group was “not a serious problem whatsoever” and had the weakest standing of any other Muslim Brotherhood organization in the Middle East.

In another setback for the Muslim Brotherhood, more moderate Islamic candidates who decided to run for Parliament, despite the calls for a boycott, won 17 seats out of 150. Most of the seats in the newly elected house went to tribal leaders, government loyalists and independent businessmen. But a few small political parties, many of them formed just before the election, also gained a foothold in the assembly.

AmmanNet, a local community radio station, reported this week that the more moderate Islamists who did well in the elections intended to form a parliamentary bloc that could one day compete for grassroots popular support against the Brotherhood.

“These elections were done to reinvigorate the political legitimacy of the regime and it largely succeeded,” said Mr. Rantesi, the editor and columnist.

Despite the election outcome, the king still faces other problems.

This year’s budget deficit, for example, is projected to reach about $3 billion. It will likely require austerity measures and price increases of the sort that last year provoked Jordan’s most serious demonstrations since the start of the Arab Spring.

Jordan’s geographical position also makes it vulnerable to external shocks. A flood of refugees from Syria, exceeding 300,000, is also straining the government’s limited resources and the rate of youth unemployment is almost double the overall unemployment rate, which is 13 percent.

Still, the voter turnout shows that Jordanians are willing to give the government a chance to deliver on its promises of a more participatory political process and to deal with the weak economy.

The new lower house will also have the highest percentage of women in Jordan’s history: about 13 percent.

“The Jordanians came out and voted to test the regime’s will for political reform,” Mr. Rantesi said. “By voting, they are saying there will be no more excuses to slow down the reform path and this may be the last chance for them.”

Still, other analysts say that the outcome of the elections shows more that tribal and national origins continue to trumps considerations of policy or party affiliation. The new house, like previous ones, remains an assembly of individuals rather than parties, and one that continues to favor the so-called East Bankers, or tribal Jordanians, over the urban, largely Palestinian, population.

“I wouldn’t have voted if it wasn’t for my cousin, and I don’t think anything will really change,” Suleiman Jraisat, a businessman, said as he stood outside a rural polling station on election day near a small crowd.

In the coming days, Parliament will submit a list of names from which the king has pledged to chose the prime minister. The prime minister will name his cabinet. But in a further display of democratic process, the chosen executive will seek parliamentary ratification through a vote of confidence.

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