Written By: Naseem Tarawnah
I finally mustered up the courage to log in to the Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) website and check out what traffic tickets have been burdened up on this meager Jordanian wage-earner. Ever since the GAM announced that the average citizen (with broadband Internet access) can check out their fines online, courage has become a big factor.
Why? Because today, there are three ways of getting fined in Jordan. The first is the international standard of a traffic policeman stopping you and issuing a paper fine, which you can pay on the spot and save the hassle of having to use your lunch break to deal with unnecessary bureaucracy. The second is having one of the many speeding cameras scattered around Amman take a lovely picture of you. And the third, and perhaps worst, is a traffic policeman seeing you commit a violation, writing the ticket, and then submitting it without your knowledge.
Generally speaking, only in the first case are you, as a citizen, fully aware that you have, indeed, committed a violation and that you are, indeed, being fined for it. In the second case, your violation is standardized and you can’t argue it; unless of course there’s a flaw in the electronics. And as for the third, well, the human factor is so scary that I won’t even go there.
The problem we’re facing here is that the citizen is not in the loop.
To find out about your violations, you have to go to the GAM website (the Arabic mind you, as the English one doesn’t have the same features) and then create an account, and then check out your ticketing stats. What you get is a series of violations that tell you vaguely what you did and when you did it, and of course, the subtotal you need to pay.
Looking at my account I was left wondering if I was even in the country at the time these violations were committed and thinking to myself where I could’ve possibly committed them. Of course, having allegedly committed them weeks and weeks ago, there is no way to argue them. I don’t even remember what I had for dinner three nights ago, do you?
The uninformed Jordanian citizen remains uninformed.
The way the information is presented has changed; the medium of delivery has changed, but the process remains the same.
I have, as many of you probably have, argued my way out of tickets before. When I feel that I, as a citizen, have been the subject of an injustice, no matter how small it is, I have the right to defend myself. And many times when I feel that such an injustice has taken place I will fight it, and more often than not, I will win the bigger argument. Other times, I will admit my mistake and gladly take the fine.
The way the GAM has set things up, you can no longer put up a fight. You must succumb to the whims of a traffic officer who might have seen you change lanes without signaling and scribbled down your license plate number as fast as he could, as you sped on by.
Can they at least mail the photographic evidence to you, as is done in various other civilized nations where such a system exists?
What do you think?
There is perhaps nothing as invigorating for me personally than seeing Fadi Ghandour talk about corporate social responsibility, and government responsibilities. Many of the words are ones he’s consistently repeated but each time they feel injected with a new sense of passion than before. CSR is not simply about companies “doing good” or even attempting to brand themselves as “being good”, but - as Ghandour made a point of saying during the first plenary session of the day that questioned whether Arab businesses really care - CSR is an investment, or should be seen as an investment by companies. Essentially, companies are investing in something, such as education, where they expect to see a return on that investment. It’s a good “businessey” way to put it in my opinion, especially with CSR being so new in the region and many companies looking at it from a very Public Relations point of view. Side note: Prime Minister Nader Dahabi has more security around him than 98% of the people here, including the Egyptian Prime Minister.
Reading the various commentaries and statements that were carried in the local media, in connection with changing the name of the art and culture festival from Jerash to Jordan, one would think that a major disaster has happened signaling the end of the world! Many self-acclaimed and other genuine intellectuals alike shed many tears and precipitated to voice their concern and shock over this sudden “dramatic and catastrophic” shifting of a name! Some described the change as an act of “assassination”, others said it a” killing”, a third group lamented the “burial” of the festival and so forth. But come July and August this summer, those commentators may be surprised that people will be going to the old location of the festival in Jerash to enjoy the action and fun there just as they used to do for the last quarter of a century. So all I am saying is what is the problem?
7i·ber: [he-bur] - noun, 1. Arabic for ink 2. Citizen journalism 3. Digital ink 4. Jordanian 5. People-powered 6. Youth-powered 7. Informative 8. A 
