CAIRO: Newly appointed Jordanian Prime Minister Samir Rifai on Wednesday said he would launch a “crusade” in all its forms against corruption and favoritism in the country, one of the goals that was assigned to him by King Abdullah II when he took his post earlier this week. Rifai and his 28-member cabinet were sworn in on Monday. He made the remarks during a visit to the Anti-Corruption Department. “There will be no leniency in dealing with corruption and the corrupt, and no one will be above the law,” he said. “Corruption involves not only financial corruption, but also administrative corruption, favouritism and other concepts pertaining to political influence and money which the government considers as unacceptable at all,” he added. The King assigned the new government to supervise “transparent and fair†elections within the next year. The downfall of Dahabi was largely due to the perceived, and real, corruption charges leveled at the government, especially from the Islamic opposition. “We believe what the King says,†began Mohamed Ghanem, a member of the opposition Islamic Action Front (IAF) party that has been pressuring the King to change the way politics in the country are run. He told Bikya Masr via telephone that despite his worries over the recent past, “we will wait and see if the King comes through on his promises of a better country where democracy can flourish.†43-year-old Samer Rifai takes over as Prime Minister. He has a long family history of politics. His father, Zeid Rifai, resigned on Sunday as speaker of the upper house of Parliament in compliance with the separation of powers principle set forth in the Jordanian Constitution. The new Prime Minister is a graduate of Harvard and Cambridge Universities. “The forthcoming elections should represent a qualitative transition in Jordan’s democratic march and presents the kingdom as a model in transparency, fairness and impartiality,†the monarch said in his memo. At stake is a budget deficit that has reached an unprecedented level of more than $1.6 billion in fiscal 2009. The King usually chooses prime ministers from people with distinguished records in public life as Jordan does not have organized political parties that can run elections and obtain majorities in parliament or form coalition governments. The country’s largest and sole organized political party, the IAF, had only six deputies in the outgoing 110-member lower house of parliament. BM
