Festive Birzeit

On Monday we walked through the gates to find a circus awaiting us. Flags, banners, flyers, and posters covered nearly every square inch of ground, tree, stone, wall, buildings, grass etc. It was pretty unbelievable. And so comically silly in the overbearingness of it all. The parties were advertising themselves, but the majority of those flags, banners et all were all that garish yellow color, Fateh's party. There were some red flags (PFLP) and some orange flags (we have no idea) but it would have been a real skittle rainbow if the green flags of Hamas were there. As it were, the loudspeakers were out, and the students congregated in front of the student council building (which is so ratty by the way) to hear various speakers screaming themselves hoarse about the greatness of their parties and the changes it vows to bring about and why everyone should vote for them yada yada yada. It was pretty distracting, especially when you're in class in a far away building and still could hear the whistling and applause and reverberating voices. Now those are some quality loudspeakers. Now a normal person can infer from our tone about this subject that we are highly cynical about it all. The only two parties to win elections have always been either Hamas or Fateh. Fateh has been holding the position for three years now and students have seen absolute zilch from them. Striking to lower tuition costs is fruitless because the goal is never achieved. There are so many problems in Birzeit University that we can count off the top of our heads, such as: Incompetent/unqualified teachers, the issue of getting whatever you want because you or your family know a high-ranking personnel, the goddamn SMOKING that won't let up, inside or outside buildings (cafeterias are gas chambers), the rising tuition costs, the crap computer labs with their broken printers, the sheer fugliness of most of the students, and so on. Therefore, the whole charade of elections is a complete and utter farce, because those empty promises and vows are the backbone of them.

Tuesday classes were cancelled from twelve until two, where the customary public debate between the parties took place. We hung around for about two minutes to observe the crowd, who were standing crammed as if it were the Day of Judgement itself, before we took off to our peaceful sanctuaries.

look at those cute little Fat7awi umbrellas

UPDATE: Fateh won, because it's a one party election. And numbers as low as 43% have been estimated at the amount of student voters. That speaks volumes, dunnit.