In Amman’s political, economic and social elite salons where confidences are exchanged, one question has been steadily rising: Will Prime Minister Dr. Jafar Hassan reshuffle his cabinet for a second time?
Unconfirmed by any official source, the conjecture has swelled into a persistent murmur, fuelled by the repercussions of the recent US-Israel-Iran war on several sectors of Jordan’s economy.
Although talks are speculative, rumours follow a logic of their own. With the guns now silent and the region slowly beginning to exhale, the government faces a reckoning.
Those familiar with Hassan’s thinking, however, caution against crude prediction. A strategist by nature, the Prime Minister served as Chief of Staff to His Majesty King Abdullah II and as Minister of Planning and International Cooperation, and has built a reputation for methodical deliberation. When he carried out his first reshuffle, his office did something no Jordanian prime minister had done before: it announced, in advance, that changes were imminent, and framed the move as an act of transparency. The signal was unmistakable: ministers would not be discarded on a whim but only after a forensic, data-driven audit of their performance against key performance indicators (KPIs). Those who have worked with Hassan describe a man of iron doctrine: perform or depart. He verifies progress with his own eyes, making surprise field visits, and does not hesitate to issue corrective measures the moment he spots underperformance.
That instinct lies at the core of Hassan’s governing approach. He treats policy as a laboratory, where each milestone measures variance from the plan and each minister is a variable to be tested. He regularly reminds his team that the national modernisation project “did not begin with this government, nor will it end with it.”
Should a reshuffle take place, it would be Hassan’s second, and it would almost certainly be presented as a surgical response to changed facts on the ground and a clear signal to accelerate delivery. Among those changes are a possible merger of some ministries that will demand ministerial restructuring, as well as the unsatisfactory performance of some ministers and their teams during and after the crisis.
Yet there is no evidence confirming that a shake-up is imminent. What exists is a growing sense that the cabinet that steered the country through the war must now be better equipped to lead beyond it.
And so Amman waits to see whether the same exacting logic that compelled Hassan to preview his first reshuffle will now demand a second.
But to understand the mindset of the Harvard-educated prime minister, one needs only to consult his 2020 book, 'Jordanian Political Economy: Building Amidst Crises'. A tip the book offers to policy makers, and that I liked, is to focus on long-term strategic goals that deserve adequate attention, although it is understandable that state executives in any given country need to deal with daily issues and extinguish seemingly non-stop fires.
That same philosophy will now most probably be the quiet force deciding who stays and who goes from his team if or when a reshuffle takes place. Let’s wait and see.
Khalid Dalal is a Senior Advisor for International Strategic Communication
In Amman’s political, economic and social elite salons where confidences are exchanged, one question has been steadily rising: Will Prime Minister Dr. Jafar Hassan reshuffle his cabinet for a second time?
Unconfirmed by any official source, the conjecture has swelled into a persistent murmur, fuelled by the repercussions of the recent US-Israel-Iran war on several sectors of Jordan’s economy.
Although talks are speculative, rumours follow a logic of their own. With the guns now silent and the region slowly beginning to exhale, the government faces a reckoning.
Those familiar with Hassan’s thinking, however, caution against crude prediction. A strategist by nature, the Prime Minister served as Chief of Staff to His Majesty King Abdullah II and as Minister of Planning and International Cooperation, and has built a reputation for methodical deliberation. When he carried out his first reshuffle, his office did something no Jordanian prime minister had done before: it announced, in advance, that changes were imminent, and framed the move as an act of transparency. The signal was unmistakable: ministers would not be discarded on a whim but only after a forensic, data-driven audit of their performance against key performance indicators (KPIs). Those who have worked with Hassan describe a man of iron doctrine: perform or depart. He verifies progress with his own eyes, making surprise field visits, and does not hesitate to issue corrective measures the moment he spots underperformance.
That instinct lies at the core of Hassan’s governing approach. He treats policy as a laboratory, where each milestone measures variance from the plan and each minister is a variable to be tested. He regularly reminds his team that the national modernisation project “did not begin with this government, nor will it end with it.”
Should a reshuffle take place, it would be Hassan’s second, and it would almost certainly be presented as a surgical response to changed facts on the ground and a clear signal to accelerate delivery. Among those changes are a possible merger of some ministries that will demand ministerial restructuring, as well as the unsatisfactory performance of some ministers and their teams during and after the crisis.
Yet there is no evidence confirming that a shake-up is imminent. What exists is a growing sense that the cabinet that steered the country through the war must now be better equipped to lead beyond it.
And so Amman waits to see whether the same exacting logic that compelled Hassan to preview his first reshuffle will now demand a second.
But to understand the mindset of the Harvard-educated prime minister, one needs only to consult his 2020 book, 'Jordanian Political Economy: Building Amidst Crises'. A tip the book offers to policy makers, and that I liked, is to focus on long-term strategic goals that deserve adequate attention, although it is understandable that state executives in any given country need to deal with daily issues and extinguish seemingly non-stop fires.
That same philosophy will now most probably be the quiet force deciding who stays and who goes from his team if or when a reshuffle takes place. Let’s wait and see.
Khalid Dalal is a Senior Advisor for International Strategic Communication
In Amman’s political, economic and social elite salons where confidences are exchanged, one question has been steadily rising: Will Prime Minister Dr. Jafar Hassan reshuffle his cabinet for a second time?
Unconfirmed by any official source, the conjecture has swelled into a persistent murmur, fuelled by the repercussions of the recent US-Israel-Iran war on several sectors of Jordan’s economy.
Although talks are speculative, rumours follow a logic of their own. With the guns now silent and the region slowly beginning to exhale, the government faces a reckoning.
Those familiar with Hassan’s thinking, however, caution against crude prediction. A strategist by nature, the Prime Minister served as Chief of Staff to His Majesty King Abdullah II and as Minister of Planning and International Cooperation, and has built a reputation for methodical deliberation. When he carried out his first reshuffle, his office did something no Jordanian prime minister had done before: it announced, in advance, that changes were imminent, and framed the move as an act of transparency. The signal was unmistakable: ministers would not be discarded on a whim but only after a forensic, data-driven audit of their performance against key performance indicators (KPIs). Those who have worked with Hassan describe a man of iron doctrine: perform or depart. He verifies progress with his own eyes, making surprise field visits, and does not hesitate to issue corrective measures the moment he spots underperformance.
That instinct lies at the core of Hassan’s governing approach. He treats policy as a laboratory, where each milestone measures variance from the plan and each minister is a variable to be tested. He regularly reminds his team that the national modernisation project “did not begin with this government, nor will it end with it.”
Should a reshuffle take place, it would be Hassan’s second, and it would almost certainly be presented as a surgical response to changed facts on the ground and a clear signal to accelerate delivery. Among those changes are a possible merger of some ministries that will demand ministerial restructuring, as well as the unsatisfactory performance of some ministers and their teams during and after the crisis.
Yet there is no evidence confirming that a shake-up is imminent. What exists is a growing sense that the cabinet that steered the country through the war must now be better equipped to lead beyond it.
And so Amman waits to see whether the same exacting logic that compelled Hassan to preview his first reshuffle will now demand a second.
But to understand the mindset of the Harvard-educated prime minister, one needs only to consult his 2020 book, 'Jordanian Political Economy: Building Amidst Crises'. A tip the book offers to policy makers, and that I liked, is to focus on long-term strategic goals that deserve adequate attention, although it is understandable that state executives in any given country need to deal with daily issues and extinguish seemingly non-stop fires.
That same philosophy will now most probably be the quiet force deciding who stays and who goes from his team if or when a reshuffle takes place. Let’s wait and see.
Khalid Dalal is a Senior Advisor for International Strategic Communication
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