Political reform is the major and most insistent request in Jordan recently; it became the demand of most of the people involved in the political process, making it the most controversial subject in the country nowadays.

Although there are a lot of suggested projects and proposals for, what we call, political reform but most of these projects and proposals share common points and demands like defining citizenship’s rights and duties, modifying some laws like electoral law, political parties law, NGOs law, public meetings law, and taxes law, in addition to eliminating the usage of temporary laws; all of these demands are legitimate and necessary for a more democratic society, but anyone who takes a quick view on these demands, will find that the majority of them are simply about basic rights and civil liberties that should be ensured and protected by the constitution.

On the other hand, political reform is also a big demand in countries like the United States, France, and Germany, which are regarded as democratically advanced countries that have, what is considered, the most democratic social and political systems, but the request for political reform in such countries doesn’t include basic rights and civil liberties, at least in most cases; this takes us to the definition of the term “political reform”.

There is no clear definition for political reform, but it mainly swings between two definitions, the first is “political reform is a social movement that aims to make gradual change, or change in certain aspects of society, rather than rapid or fundamental changes” or “political reform is the development of the institutions, attitudes, and values that form the political power system of a society”; studying both definitions, we will find that the demand for political reform in the country, actually, goes beyond political reform; so, what the people are requesting is not political reform, at least in its terminological meaning.

Whatsoever, most of the controversial laws in Jordan, especially the ones that affect basic rights and limit civil liberties were originally temporary laws used by governments in the absence of parliament, some were legislatively pushed through the approval of the parliament, and some remained temporary until this moment; so, even if these laws were modified to meet the current demands of the people the problem will still exist because the government will still be able to draft and use such laws in the future; the only guarantee to avoid such situations in the future is to depend on the fundamental principles of the constitution, and that requires a constitutional reform first.

When the Jordanian constitution was adopted and ratified in 1952, it was regarded as an advanced and liberal constitution that guarantees basic rights and civil liberties, and unusually it would had still an advanced and liberal constitution in our days, except for the twenty nine modifications the constitution had been subject to over the past fifty nine years.

These constitutional modifications are problematic on three levels; the first level is that most of these modifications were made during the martial law period in the absence of the legislative authority; the second level is the content of most of the modifications, which led to current problematic legal situation; and the third level is the very big number of modifications in a relatively short time comparing, for example, to the US constitution which was amended only twenty seven times in two hundred twenty three years although that over ten thousand constitutional amendments have been introduced in the US Congress since 1789.

Eventually, regardless of the reasons and circumstances that led to these twenty nine modifications, what we need now is to go back to the original raw achievement of our fathers and grandfathers in 1952, considering it the cornerstone and the social contract of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and start our constitutional-political reform from there.

Bashar Al-Khatib contributed this article to Ammon News English