There is nothing more telling in the Jordanian scene today than this silent daily paradox: a citizen hides his car from the law because it is “expired license”, while the state launches major projects with full confidence because they are “procedures completed”. Between these two extremes, not only does the law get lost, but the very idea of justice itself erodes, settling in a gray area that is neither captured by cameras nor measured by fine meters!
Three hundred thousand unlicensed vehicles — if the estimations are correct — do not represent a traffic phenomenon as much as they resemble an open archive of deferred poverty. Each vehicle is not just a passing violation, but a short biography of a pressured life: a salary that barely touches four hundred dinars and is not sufficient, rent that does not wait, electricity and water bills that do not know postponement, a university student who needs daily transport, and medication that is deferred because insurance and licensing alone might swallow what remains of the month. Here, the question becomes obvious and troubling at the same time: Is being unlicensed a decision? Or an inevitable result of a flawed economic equation?
On the opposite side, and not far from these weary streets, major urban projects are introduced as the engine of growth and investment attractors, surrounded by official discourse affirming—rightly—the soundness of procedures, clarity of ownership, and the necessity of protecting national projects from rumors. This stance is understandable and necessary. But the smarter question does not begin with accusation, but with analysis: Why is the public opinion primed to believe in the idea of "privileges" in the first place?
The answer does not reside in the land and surveying maps department, but in the collective feeling that the scales of justice are tight when it concerns the weaker citizens, and straightens and becomes deliberate when investments are present, especially those associated with large or cross-border capital.
In traffic laws, fines accumulate without a clear time limit, cameras spread without sufficient public discussion, and the vehicle is towed considering it a “risk to public safety”. At the same time, an easy and clear path for objections is absent, installment payments stumble, and humanitarian exemption for the distressed hides behind complicated procedures. At this moment, the role of law changes in people's awareness: from a system of protection to a financial control tool, from a social contract to a revenue equation. And here specifically, the most dangerous paradox is born: the law that does not consider capacity transforms from a guardian of order into a producer of silent chaos.
The story does not stop at cars. In this country, many things are “expired” and not withdrawn from service: dilapidated public buildings, threatened schools, rough streets, facilities not updated for decades, and even administrative positions that have not been scrutinized for a long time. Yet, the regulatory effort focuses on the small vehicle, not necessarily because it is the most dangerous, but because it is the easiest to control, politically less costly, and provides faster returns.
And because irony is sometimes more truthful than anger, a seemingly absurd but revealing question can be raised: If the state needs space to hold large numbers of unlicensed vehicles, and if the vast lands discussed in the public dialogue are available within organized and planned projects, why not imagine — theoretically only — transforming part of them into free temporary impound lots exempt from fines??!!
This is not a real estate proposal, nor an executive call, but a sarcastic metaphor testing our way of thinking: Are we facing the crises with a mentality of fines and campaigns, or with a mindset of solutions and reintegration?
The law fundamentally is not a rigid text, but a trust agreement. And when the citizen feels that this contract is applied to him with full firmness, while being handled with others flexibly and broadly, questions begin to turn into doubts, and doubts into noise, and noise into the erosion of trust. Then, denial statements—no matter how accurate—are not enough because trust is not regained by denial alone, but by restoring balance.
What is required then?
Not to drop the law, but to return its humanity.
Not to stunt investment, but to explain its logic and justice to the public.
Not to tolerate violations, but to open the doors to objections, installments, and conditional exemptions with transparency.
Not to silence people, but to listen to their questions before they turn into rigid beliefs.
The state's prestige is not built by accumulating fines, but by the law's ability to be fair, understood, and applicable. And national projects are not protected by the language of threat, but by proactive transparency, when the citizen feels that what is demanded of him on the street is the same is expected from everyone in the market.
And the real question is not: who owns the land?
But: who owns the sense of justice?
For when the citizen loses this feeling, every city—no matter how modern—becomes soulless, and every car—no matter how compliant with licensing requirements—just a means of escape from a reality that convinces no one!
And justice, in the end, is like the authentic hospitality coffee: it is not fitting if prepared in haste. If we rush in brewing it, it struggles between bitterness and ash. And if we serve it in two degrees—tepid for those who own, and scalding to burn the tongue for those who do not—it loses all meaning of generosity.
And the irony that awakens dark sarcasm, is that the state chases on our streets the only "wheel" it can easily track: the metal wheel of the poor car. Meanwhile, the "wheel" of grand policies and facilitations spins elsewhere, not speeding up where it should, nor slowing down where wisdom lies in pausing.
We do not ask from the state to stop, but to walk with equal steps with all its children; because justice that is made on two fires, and served in two different cups, will never be justice. It will be just a transient beverage that neither quenches the thirst for the right, nor awakens the conscience of equality.
This is not an article against the government, but for its benefit.
Strong governments do not fear questions,
but worry only about the day when people stop asking them!
