(2 of 2)
Although Hussein yearns to reign as a constitutional monarch ("something between the Queen of England and De Gaulle," a friend says), bitter experience suggests to him that one-man rule is safest, and Jordan is not a democratic land. Even so, Hussein last month held "fair and impartial" elections for Parliament, three years before he was required to do so. Though parties had been prohibited since an attempted coup in 1957 (Hussein lifted the ban only three weeks ago), the elections were a far cry from the rigged balloting held last year, when no fewer than 40 candidates, all the King's men, ran unopposed. This time there were two or three candidates contesting nearly every seat; voters were impressed enough with Jordan's economic progress to give the King a solid bloc of 40 pro-government Deputies in Amman's 60-seat lower house.
To head the new government, Hussein, fortnight ago, renamed as Premier able Wasfi Tal, 42, who was summoned home last February from his post as Jordan's Ambassador to Baghdad and ordered to breathe new life into a wheezing administration. A onetime British army captain who takes Washington's New Frontier as his model, Tal installed a young, twelve-man Cabinet that included eleven university graduates, immediately fired 150 corrupt or inefficient senior officials in a housecleaning that swept out his own uncle.
Go-Karts & Fast Cars. Despite his tight control over the kingdom, Hussein is refreshingly unlike a King. With his blue-eyed British wife Toni, renamed after their marriage Muna al Hussein (Desired of Hussein), and blue-eyed, eleven-month-old Crown Prince Abdullah, he relishes domestic life in a modern, eight-room villa called Daret Alkair (House of Happiness) outside Amman. He loves speed, races his Aston Martin and Ferrari autos at 100 m.p.h., recently landed a Boeing 720 jet at Amman Airport. He Go-Karts so often with Muna that one diplomat became expert at the sport just to keep in touch with them.
For all his exuberance, Hussein has shown signs of age and strain. "He seems a century older than the boy who became King ten years ago," says a friend. With all those enemies around, the wonder is that he had a chance to age at all.