Press Release
Modernizing the Public Sector is Doomed to Fail Under a Secular System of Government
Detached from Managing People's Interests and Taking Care of their Affairs
(Translated)

Prime Minister, Bishr Al-Khasawneh, announced the outputs of the Public Sector Modernization Committee, after a 6-month work, that works on assessing the conditions of 97 government departments and institutions. He indicated that "ministries and government departments will be merged during the period from 2022 to 2024", adding that these components focus in essence on serving people and those dealing with the public sector, in line with the outputs of the vision of economic modernization and the political modernization system that were launched with the entry of the second centenary of the country. He stressed that the first phase of the executive work program of the road map will end in 2025, as the impact of the program will be evaluated at the end of the last year, so that the second phase of it will be designed.

What raises frustration and belittling the awareness of the general public in Jordan is the repetition by successive governments of the same regime of plans and initiatives since 1999 for the so-called public sector development in Jordan, which exceeded 12 plans in addition to the various independent bodies! Plans and strategies were put inside the drawers of previous governments for their failure and aborted by the following governments. From the misfortune of the Ummah is its affliction with such governments that a Ministry for the Development of the Public Sector was established in 2006 with the aim of working on its development. The government in 2019 and after more than twelve years abolished this ministry, after being headed by 21 ministers in the past years, without any significant achievement, but rather the public sector still suffers from more slack, mismanagement, low efficiency and repulsive bureaucracy at the level of individuals and investment groups, and the best evidence of this is this new plan that will take years to complete its first phase, which ends in 2025, then a program that ends after 3 years and then ends after 10 years to reach a capable public sector!

These studies and theoretical actions and plans did not and will not produce any improvement in the performance of the public sector except to charge the state treasury with the salaries of ministers and members of committees and the expenses of dismantling, installing and regrouping ministries and institutions in terms of names and roles, because the so-called executive authority is not from the same source. As the governments entrusted with managing the public sector seeks to please the political system of government and its stability, so its policy in public employment is having loyalty, not the competence, and competition in achieving the directions of the royal mandate when forming the government. It is not responsible for achieving or not achieving any achievements in the public sector when it is gone, or for the money that was spent and wasted on ministers and committees that are useless. Rather, it boasts its methods of collecting revenues and taxes, and compete in that with successive governments.

The problems that the general public suffer from as a result of slackness, administrative weakness, and even fraud in performance, competence, complexity, and procrastination in facilitating people’s interests are apparent, and renewed on multiple occasions, such as the death of innocent people in the accidents of Salt Hospital, the Dead Sea and the port of Aqaba, in addition to the complexities of public services for individuals in health care, education, universities, unemployment and exorbitant taxes, all of this does not call for plans to modernize the public sector, nor for administrative reform, but rather requires a radical solution and a comprehensive change of the foundations by which people's interests are managed.

Ruling in Islam is not through a council of ministers (parliament) and ministers who have specializations, powers and budgets separate from each other due to reality and powers, like in man-made systems of government today. One might have more powers than others, and the excess is not taken from one to the other except by many long procedures that add complexity to solving the interests of the people; due to the overlap of several ministries in dealing with the same interest, instead of the people’s interests being within a single administrative body that brings them together.

People have tasted hardship due to the mismanagement of the current system. The management policy upon which the Islamic Caliphate State is based, to which we invite you, is summarized in three things: (simplicity in the system, competence of the one who undertakes the work, and speed in completing the work), and this is taken from the reality of achieving the interest. The person with the interest only wants to achieve it quickly, and to achieve it in the most complete manner, and the Messenger says: «إِنَّ اللَّهَ كَتَبَ الْإِحْسَانَ عَلَى كُلِّ شَيْءٍ،...»Allah who is blessed and exalted has decreed that everything should be done in a good way, …” Narrated by Muslim from Shaddad Bin Aus.

This requires the development of administrative systems that prevent the leakage of defects to the administration. So; There must be a system for the administrative apparatus, a system for management style, a system for employees, and a system for the public’s relationship with management and employees, so that these systems ensure that state employees are at the service of the people, and ensure the benefit of people with competencies in the administrative apparatus, regardless of their school of thought and types, and ensure the improvement of management style. It prevents the tyranny of superiors on employees, as well as the tyranny of employees by the public, and allows the interests to be dealt with quickly and with minimal effort.

The Prophet (saw) used to manage the interests of Muslims and solve their administrative problems with ease, and he appointed some of the Companions to do so. So the people’s interests will be an apparatus that the Caliph takes over or appoints a competent manager to take charge of it, and this is what we adopt, in order to reduce the burden on the Caliph, especially as the interests have branched out and multiplied, so there will be an apparatus for the people’s interests under the supervision of a competent manager with methods and means that facilitate the lives of the subjects, and provide them with necessary services without complication, but rather easily.

The clarity of the foundations upon which the management of interests and the care of people’s affairs are based on the rules of Islam which the Caliph implements in the Islamic state, it makes the management of interests a fixed model that does not need to change, but it ensures stability and permanence, which are not achieved by secular governments that are inseparable from the objectives of the man-made system of governance and its view of foreign policy so that it harmonizes the management of the public sector with suits the colonial programs of the International Monetary Fund and in the interest of ambitious states, and agreements with a Jewish entity, so the dams are drained in order to justify buying water from them, or an agreement of intentions or even railway projects to link this entity with the Gulf states and make Jordan the gateway to openness to empower it economically.

The system of government in Islam, i.e., the Khilafah (Caliphate), is distinct from the forms of government known in the world, whether it is in the basis on which it is built, or in the ideas, concepts, standards and rulings by which affairs are taken care of, or in the constitution and laws that it puts into practice and implementation, or in the form in which the Islamic state is represented. Which distinguishes it from all forms of government in the world. The Khilafah State has historically set the finest examples in the style of its administrative apparatus and the fulfillment of the interests of the subjects, when the Caliph understood the meaning of taking care of people’s affairs and fulfilling their interests. The Messenger of Allah (saw) said: «مَا مِنْ عَبْدٍ يَسْتَرْعِيهِ اللهُ رَعِيَّةً، يَمُوتُ يَوْمَ يَمُوتُ، وَهُوَ غَاشٌّ لِرَعِيَّتِهِ، إِلَّا حَرَّمَ اللهُ عَلَيْهِ الْجَنَّةَ»“Any governor in charge of Muslim subjects who dies while acting dishonestly towards them will be excluded by Allah from Paradise.”

Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir
in Wilayah Jordan