Austerity always starts where no one screams!
From the air conditioner that is silently turned off. From the vehicle that is stopped without objection. From the paper that is not printed. From the small employee who has no phone to call anyone with!
This is not austerity. This is the choice of those who endure — and it is a political choice par excellence!
On March 30, 2026, the Jordanian government issued its directive. No air conditioning in ministries. No travel for delegations. No government vehicles after hours. Then it tasked the Audit Bureau with follow-up.
The Audit Bureau. The same entity that recorded in its 2024 report seventeen thousand two hundred and eighty-six violations in the use of government vehicles alone — across ninety entities, within one year — prior to the directive.
Seventeen thousand violations. And only a few were stopped.
Now the directive has come. How many violations will there be after it? No one dares to ask — because everyone knows the answer.
Jordanians memorize this cycle just as they memorize their children's names: violation, report, referral, shelving. New violation, new report, referral, shelving. And at the end of every year, the bureau confidently issues its report saying that the violations are "continuing" — as if continuity is an achievement worthy of documentation!
For seventy-seven years, the shelf has never been filled — because it is never opened.
But the bureau is not the issue. The issue is in the logic of austerity itself!
When the government says "we are practicing austerity," it means: we touch the visible body of the state, and we leave what is under the skin.
It touches the air conditioner. It leaves the one billion six hundred and sixty-two million dinars absorbed annually by twenty-six independent agencies — two-thirds of it salaries and perks, and its deficit alone eight hundred and ten million. Agencies were fifty-seven then "merged" — and no one knows where the difference went!
Agencies that the Ministry of Public Sector Development itself documented that their "leadership and supervisory" structures are used to raise salaries, not efficiency.
A government within the government. And a government within the government's government. And in the basement, a procurement department employee sweats without air conditioning!
The question posed by the ordinary mind — not the mind of an analyst — is: why does the bare minimum suffice for those who do not make decisions, and not for those who do?
Why doesn't austerity start from the ministers' salaries that exceed the minimum by tens of times? Why doesn't it start from jobs created to organize people not the work? From contracts written in a language that makes waste legal? From bonuses distributed as allegiance not as entitlement?
The answer is one: because austerity on the air conditioner doesn't make anyone angry. And austerity on the agencies angers those for whom the agencies were built to please!
This isn't an observation. This is the system.
There is one rule that reproduces this system in every cycle, in every budget, in every directive:
The most vulnerable bear it. The strongest protect themselves!
This isn't a side effect of policy. This is the policy!
Announced austerity is not reform in the usual sense — it is a redistribution of pain downwards, while keeping the upper structures out of any accountability!
Every directive creates a facade. And behind the facade, the cycle continues: wastage hides in an "emergency" or "miscellaneous" item! Authority is distributed so that no decision is completed by anyone, hence no one is questioned. Responsibilities are intertwined until everyone becomes partners — so no one is punished. Corruption is always discovered after the statute of limitations, because timing the disclosure is part of the design.
This is not failure. It is design.
The state says: "We started with ourselves."
And this sentence is the most false and true at the same time!
True because they really started with something. False because they started with what is possible — not with what is necessary!
Real austerity — cutting leadership salaries, dissolving parallel agencies, actually restructuring the public sector, eliminating hereditary jobs — does not issue a directive. It enacts a law. It faces opposition. It costs. And it angers!
And the government that knows this chooses the directive that costs nothing, angers no one, and changes nothing — then it tasks the Audit Bureau with it, which has been writing its reports precisely for seventy-seven years and then refers them to the shelf!
And the people who have learned to read government directives inversely know: the real bill does not come by a directive.
It came in the increase of fuel prices at the beginning of April. And it will come in the electricity bill. And in the price of bread if the situation persists. And then no one will ask about the air conditioner — because the matter will be much bigger than that!
Real austerity does not start from the basement!
It starts from the floor where the directive was written — then the door was closed, the air conditioner turned on, and they waited!
But — it's not the right time!
The state has not shown a new face. It was simply — seen without a mask!
