Extremely unsteadly lies the head of the King of Jordan

"The king is running out of ideas as well as cash. His favourite shock-absorbing tactic—to blame his governments and sack his prime ministers—hardly washes. “We can no longer remember their names,” groans a diplomat, after the king dropped his fifth prime minister since the Arab awakening began last year. Abdullah vaunts amendments “to a third of the constitution”, yet, though he has appointed an independent election commission and a constitutional court, many of the measures are cosmetic. The king has kept his crucial power to dissolve parliament and rule by decree. A recent law lets censors curb internet news sites. His security forces’ finances are still not openly audited, so corruption within them is rife; an intelligence chief was recently embroiled. “The Arab spring was a wake-up call,” bemoans Yusuf Mansour, an economist and one-time royal speechwriter. “But Jordan never woke up.”"