The Amman city council has removed campaign posters for Iraqis voting in Jordan during the election this month, saying they should be confined to the vicinity of polling stations and not plastered on walls and lampposts.
Amman Municipality official Izzedine Shammout [said] it was illegal to glue election posters to the city’s buildings and infrastructure. He said his office had removed dozens of posters around the Jordanian capital and ordered that they be hung close to ballot centers.
Source: [AP via News from Russia] Photo by Nader Daoud for AP
I know I might be day-dreaming, but part of me wants to believe that Jordanian authorities have responded to Jordanian bloggers’ concerns (here and here) by removing these posters only one day after bloggers expressed dissatisfaction with their blatant display in the heart of the Jordanian capital. Here is one excerpt from Jordanian bloggger Sha3teely:
Mr. Allawi, those walls belong to the Jordanian people not to anyone else. And if you would like to spread your campaign on the street at least rent one of those street billboards and keep those walls clean. Because I really don’t think you are going to care enough and remove those posters after the elections in Baghdad finish…
UPDATE: And here is Al-Ghad story (In Arabic)
With the exception on north african arab countries which i know nothing about, i can’t think of any arabic country where people drive better than jordanians, despite how much we suck
Well Kinzi … it seems we drive in totally different parts of Amman 🙂
I really don’t want to go into this discussion because I can feel that it will be a very long one … so let’s just agree to disagree 🙂
Khalideh, you really think the Iraqis are worse drivers than the Jordanians? I spend one and 1/2 hours a day on the roads at peak traffic times and I gently don’t agree! If anything, they are TOO courteous and bottle up the circles.
I look forward to the day they are back in Baghdad not for our streets, but so they can go back to ‘normal’ life.
I am glad they will take down the election posters. It was overkill and as Sha3teely said, they could have rented billboards.
Its good that they removed them, they were being plastered all over the place, ive even seen some posted on top of those signs that tell you directions to different areas (i forgot the name!)
Finally … some common sense
You know what my dream is these days?
I would love to see Amman streets clean of Iraqi cars and Iraqi drivers … they drive as if they own the streets and I really get upset by that … they are even worse drivers than us Jordanians 😉
this is relieving to read
yeah thats much more better
lool you are dreaming…but hey…its a damn good dream
thank God those things came down.
what would’ve been ironic is if they had posted “jordan first” posters next to them.