"Jama3et el Janoub (southerners) met with jama3et el wasat (the middle), and agreed to form a pact this time and give their votes to one candidate!"
It's that time of the year again, the University Student Council Election lobbying, and this guy who barely says Hi to me is suddenly nice and friendly, then explains in a low voice what the deal is this year… assuming unquestionably that I want to know what 'they' agreed upon and who I'm supposed to vote for!!
"There was no one running for the Christians, so I decided to nominate myself… because we have to have a candidate!" he continues proudly, and I'm trying to hide my outrage!! "But you're graduating on the first semester and won't be able to serve a full council term," I ask him, "would the University allow you to run?"
"I'll ask, but someone told me this won't be a problem…" he says casually, and he goes on explaining, "the Christians decided to enter the south-middle pact, and they will all have an internal vote to agree on which candidate to support, I'll let you know what happens… we're having frequent meetings and things aren't final yet, we're not sure if the north will enter the pact!" Oh!! Please… I'm really waiting for your decision!! How can I not honor the unspoken rules of where I should stand and in what group I automatically fall!!!
Now in my fourth year at university, none of this is new to me, this sort of talk starts circulating during the spring semester with each election season. What infuriates me the most is the fact that people I don't know have the nerve to assume that they represent me and can make a decision on my behalf and on behalf of a whole list of students whom they label as "their people"… Last year one guy came up to me and said "can you just let us know when you cast your vote so we can cross your name off the list?" He didn’t think he had any reason to doubt to whom I would give my vote…
Today this guy comes and tells me that they (God knows who they are and how exactly they were chosen to represent this group or that) agreed with Bani Hassan that "Christians will support Bani Hassan in the engineering faculty in return for the reverse in the faculty of business!" Believe it or not even students who couldn't care less about any of this find themselves eventually drawn in, voting to this candidate or that under pressure from some friend through a chain that inevitably leads to a list with their name on it!!
We talk about Tribalism and Geographic considerations in the Parliament… come see the Universities first!! How can we expect to ever see a real change and true political development and democracy if this sort of mentality is so alive and being fostered among the nation's youth??!! I will always be proud of my roots, but I refuse to let where I'm from or what my religion is categorize me… When will we have candidates who represent a genuine stream of thought and run based on a clear agenda?!
This whole political development scheme has been going on for quite a while now in Jordan, but I can tell you that from where I stand, political development is very far from taking place at our universities… My four years at university have introduced to me the practical meaning of tribalism, dogmatism, geographic and religious bias, and bigotry… and for all I know the student council does pretty much nothing… except perhaps the reception and registration of new students each year, to do them justice!!
There's a lot that has to change at the grassroots level, in the culture, mentality, and upbringing of the young people! But the official approach takes a huge part of the blame… for a very long time political affiliations or activism simply meant trouble – a black point on one's record, and a recipe for headaches, so the majority of students steered away from that path… Nothing tangible is being done now to change this perception, so not only are we not making progress, we are moving backwards... and this scenario doesn't look like it will be changing anytime soon!!!
It's that time of the year again, the University Student Council Election lobbying, and this guy who barely says Hi to me is suddenly nice and friendly, then explains in a low voice what the deal is this year… assuming unquestionably that I want to know what 'they' agreed upon and who I'm supposed to vote for!!
"There was no one running for the Christians, so I decided to nominate myself… because we have to have a candidate!" he continues proudly, and I'm trying to hide my outrage!! "But you're graduating on the first semester and won't be able to serve a full council term," I ask him, "would the University allow you to run?"
"I'll ask, but someone told me this won't be a problem…" he says casually, and he goes on explaining, "the Christians decided to enter the south-middle pact, and they will all have an internal vote to agree on which candidate to support, I'll let you know what happens… we're having frequent meetings and things aren't final yet, we're not sure if the north will enter the pact!" Oh!! Please… I'm really waiting for your decision!! How can I not honor the unspoken rules of where I should stand and in what group I automatically fall!!!
Now in my fourth year at university, none of this is new to me, this sort of talk starts circulating during the spring semester with each election season. What infuriates me the most is the fact that people I don't know have the nerve to assume that they represent me and can make a decision on my behalf and on behalf of a whole list of students whom they label as "their people"… Last year one guy came up to me and said "can you just let us know when you cast your vote so we can cross your name off the list?" He didn’t think he had any reason to doubt to whom I would give my vote…
Today this guy comes and tells me that they (God knows who they are and how exactly they were chosen to represent this group or that) agreed with Bani Hassan that "Christians will support Bani Hassan in the engineering faculty in return for the reverse in the faculty of business!" Believe it or not even students who couldn't care less about any of this find themselves eventually drawn in, voting to this candidate or that under pressure from some friend through a chain that inevitably leads to a list with their name on it!!
We talk about Tribalism and Geographic considerations in the Parliament… come see the Universities first!! How can we expect to ever see a real change and true political development and democracy if this sort of mentality is so alive and being fostered among the nation's youth??!! I will always be proud of my roots, but I refuse to let where I'm from or what my religion is categorize me… When will we have candidates who represent a genuine stream of thought and run based on a clear agenda?!
This whole political development scheme has been going on for quite a while now in Jordan, but I can tell you that from where I stand, political development is very far from taking place at our universities… My four years at university have introduced to me the practical meaning of tribalism, dogmatism, geographic and religious bias, and bigotry… and for all I know the student council does pretty much nothing… except perhaps the reception and registration of new students each year, to do them justice!!
There's a lot that has to change at the grassroots level, in the culture, mentality, and upbringing of the young people! But the official approach takes a huge part of the blame… for a very long time political affiliations or activism simply meant trouble – a black point on one's record, and a recipe for headaches, so the majority of students steered away from that path… Nothing tangible is being done now to change this perception, so not only are we not making progress, we are moving backwards... and this scenario doesn't look like it will be changing anytime soon!!!
7 comments:
Great post Lina, way to go. I completely agree with you on all the points you mentioned, and sad thing is, this has been getting worse as the years evolve.
Nada told me she was going to run for arts this year, do you have any idea if she did or not? I haven't been to school in ages... Yay, gotta take my camera tomorrow to take pictures of the caravan they call elections!
Amen to this post.
Four and a half years in pharmacy school and all I heard was one of two reasons to vote for a certain candidate:
(a) it is your religious duty
(b) itha ma intakhabt X, bimsikooha il [fill in geographical/religious background]
And being of Eastern Jordanian Christian background gave the impression that I had to vote (or I actually did vote) one way but not the other which is not true. The problem is you can't talk to 98% of the candidates because they themselves don't know why they are running.
Just stay away from the ikhwan if they win and go around yelling "takbeer" or "watan" if they win and start shooting in the air to prove they are actual "nashama".
Great post.
Oh wow, i can so relate to this. On my campus the student government is called Associated Students. Of course i knew a great deal about them because i was a reporter and then the news editor on my campus paper. We always refered to them as the ASS organization because they did crap, absolutely nothing to benefit the students on campus.
And ofcourse, there was always that notion that depending on who ran for what position you would vote for the person you most likely identified with, so if a minority ran, minorities would vote for the minority. if a white person ran, well youget the picture.
But like i said, they did crap and their meetings were worse. sometimes they would spend hours deciding what to have for lunch at their next meeting. Oey!
One semester was intersting though. many of the seats were won by activists, and instead of spending their time deciding how to help their fellow students out, they would spend their meetings writing out statements on how they did not support the war in Iraq or how they did not support the wall being built in Palestine. While their harts were in the right places, everyone wondered what would happne with their 12 dollars they paid in part of their tuition to support student government.
oh yeah, one more thing. my campus has a population of about 30 thousand students, and only about 500 or less people vote. whats it like on your campus?
I'm really enjoying this blog reading business. I'm a newbie to blogs; I started by reading Natasha's, and now I'm hooked to all of Jordan Planet!
I like almost all the blogs, but I must say that the girls' blogs are generally better :) It's probably because they're more closely in touch with language.
"Blogger", kalima mushtaka min "blog": Balaga, yablugu, blogger. ;)
That's just sad.. it's been close to 7 years since I've graduated from Jordan (oh boy, I've witnessed the birth of "watan" during my college years ain't I lucky?!) to find out that things are still the same in terms of campus elections, if not even worse, is truly unfortunate. Sometimes I wonder if we would ever be able to make Any progress whatsoever.
Excellent post Lina, I think we all can relate.
Hey Lina,
respect for the post, I dunno if you remember last year, I was planning on running for the elections until my friend XX told me he wants in, and I agreed to back off as he gave me his word to work hard, and never make me regret doin so, I not only backed off, but I supported him too, I asked -not told- all my friend to vote for him, explaining his agenda to everyone, I still remember the same words I used to tell everyone "he wont change the uni, the system, nor maybe anything else, but I can be sure he'll try his best to serve within his capabilities, all I'm askin you is to give him a vote if and only if you believe he deserves it", and I guess I managed to get him a huge # of votes, I was telling a friend of mine about him, and she asked me "is he Palestinian?", I said "yes, but it's not the point", one minute later she was telling her friend "vote for XX, he's Palestinian" who the hell said he was representing Palestinians, knowing that Islamic candidates were all Palestinians too, it’s about race my friends, but not body got it, and many other situations exactly similar to it happened, people just ask “is he Palestinian??”, a friend was with me when I was telling one salty girl (I don’t mean mal7a, I mean from Al-Salt), one minute after she left he said “hay salteyyeh ya zalameh, ra7 tsawwet la 3abeyyat zay ma ana shayfak!!”, though I knew it was true, but I was trying to convince him that we’re engineers, and above these silly discriminations.
that uy (XX) was the candidate representing "elwe7deh el tollabeyyeh", unfortunately, I didn’t have the chance to test how true his words were, as he failed.
the guy came to me two weeks ago and told me "Rami, we want your support this year too", I played innocent and asked “in what?”, he explained, I told him “I don’t support blocks, I support people, I didn’t support you because I believe in al-wehdeh eltollabeyyeh, I supported my friend that I trust, and his friend that he trusted (they were two guys running on behalf of al-wehdeh), I’m supporting anyone this year, I’ll just give my vote to someone who deserves it, if I found non, I’ll not vote unless someone I really trust told me about someone he really trusts and gave me enough reasons!!
To be frank, I regret every penny I spent supporting that guy and his friend, every phone call I made, every email I sent, everything, cause all I did, he saw as my national duty as a Palestinian rather that a friend’s support. I hate alwehdeh el tollabeyyeh, I hate the shallow way we think, and as long as we allow these shallow thoughts control us, we’ll never evolve
* sorry for the long story, but I just wanna say one little conflict that took place at year1 elections, kan fi shab esmo yazeed karadsheh mrashe7 7alo, fa kan fi shalleh shabab wa badat be7ko 3an el inti5abat, fa a Palestinian muslim girl said “I guess I’ll vote for yazeed, he’s cute –I’ll skip the shallow reason behind voting- a guy told her “keef betsawteelo, hada masee7i, wa ordony foa2 haik”, it was 0.1 before the guy noticed the crosses over some girl’s chests, and some of them were “Jordanian foa2 haik” too, I guess you know the end of the story.
* forgive me for my spelling mistakes, never been good at it
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