Angry protests rocked cities across Jordan overnight against IMF-backed austerity measures including a new income tax draft law and price hikes, hours after the government and unions failed to reach an agreement to end the standoff.
About 3,000 people faced down a heavy security presence to gather near the prime minister’s office in central Amman until the early hours of Saturday morning, waving Jordanian flags and signs reading “we will not kneel.”
Protests have gripped the country since Wednesday, when hundreds flooded the streets of Amman and demonstrated in other cities to demand the fall of the government.
Photo: AFP
The government has proposed an income tax draft law, yet to be approved by parliament, aimed at increasing taxes on employees by at least 5 percent and on companies by between 20 and 40 percent.
It is the latest in a series of economic reforms and repeated price hikes on basic goods since Amman secured a US$723-million three-year credit line from the IMF in 2016.
The Economist Intelligence Unit earlier this year ranked Jordan’s capital as one of the most expensive in the Arab world.
Since January, Jordan — which suffers high unemployment and has few natural resources — has seen repeated price rises including on bread, as well as tax hikes on basic goods.
Overnight, protestors outside Jordanian Prime Minister Hani Mulki’s office shouted slogans, including “the ones raising prices want to burn the country” and “this Jordan is our Jordan, Mulki should leave.”
Mulki on Saturday met with trade union representatives who demanded the income tax law be revoked, but failed to reach an agreement.
The head of Jordan’s federation of unions, Ali Obus, demanded that the state “maintain its independence and not bow to IMF demands.”
King Abdullah II called on parliament to lead a “comprehensive and reasonable national dialogue” on the new tax law.
“It would not be fair that the citizen alone bears the burden of financial reforms,” he told officials on Saturday evening.
A majority of 78 out of parliament’s 130 representatives have pledged to vote against the government’s income tax law.
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
Some things might go without saying, but just in case... Belgium’s food agency issued a public health warning as the festive season wrapped up on Tuesday: Do not eat your Christmas tree. The unusual message came after the city of Ghent, an environmentalist stronghold in the country’s East Flanders region, raised eyebrows by posting tips for recycling the conifers on the dinner table. Pointing with enthusiasm to examples from Scandinavia, the town Web site suggested needles could be stripped, blanched and dried — for use in making flavored butter, for instance. Asked what they thought of the idea, the reply
US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen on Monday met virtually with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) and raised concerns about “malicious cyber activity” carried out by Chinese state-sponsored actors, the US Department of the Treasury said in a statement. The department last month reported that an unspecified number of its computers had been compromised by Chinese hackers in what it called a “major incident” following a breach at contractor BeyondTrust, which provides cybersecurity services. US Congressional aides said no date had been set yet for a requested briefing on the breach, the latest in a serious of cyberattacks
RSS