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No lenience to resisting law enforcement

Oct 14,2014 - Last updated at Oct 14,2014

Late last week, Jordanian police clashed with citizens who were protesting action by the Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) to reorganise the heavily populated capital.

There are many aspects of our capital’s life that need urgent attention and, often, radical revision. GAM has been trying, although with much difficulty, to do just that. Every move has been met with undue strong popular resistance.

Not too long ago, the city authority, jointly with the Ministry of Health, lost the very important battle of enforcing an existing law of banning smoking in public places, mainly in restaurants and coffee shops.

Under intense pressure from the restaurant and coffee shop industry, the anti-smoking law enforcement effort crumbled.

The implications are severe. Not only because smoking in public places is illegal, not only because it kills; not only because smoke-related diseases add an enormous amount of money to the cost of heavily indebted public health services that provide most Jordanians with free medical care; not because the practice, now prevented in most countries, has been fast-spreading among Jordanian youth as a result of authorities’ leniency; but also because the government’s retreat in the face of public resistance has become a dangerous pattern.

In the ongoing tug of war between the authorities’ repeated efforts to enforce an existing law and the resisting lobbies, government retreat has been playing well in the hands of those who thrived, and continue to thrive, outside the perimeters of the law at the expense of public order.

Over the years, the ugly and the very obstructive phenomenon of illegally using pedestrian pavements, public space and roadsides to erect stalls to display all kinds of goods for sale has spread beyond control everywhere, in the entire country, but particularly in crowded city centres, with one unchecked aggression on public property encouraging many others.

That did not only cause major movement obstruction and inconvenience, it also endangered public safety as vendors’ stalls are erected right on the emergency lanes on the new airport highway and the many other main roads across the country.

GAM, which managed to successfully remove so far some of those abnormalities, is proceeding with its campaign to rid the capital of years of accumulated violations of law and flagrant infringements on public property.

By no means is this an easy task, and only if the municipality receives the full cooperation of the government and the people can it perform its gigantic duties.

The current confrontation is between the municipality and the Abdali market stall owners who are protesting the city’s decision to move the market to another location not too far from the current one and not too much different either. 

Normally, the city authority would be blamed if it failed to provide the concerned vendors with alternative space to move to. This time, it did not fail to do so, and therefore, and as law-abiding citizens, we should respect such decisions without need to involve our heavily burdened security authorities at crucial crisis times in the whole region.

If in this country we are truly sincere about defending and protecting the unique levels of security, stability and safety we enjoy while at the very centre of a turbulent region, we should keep in mind that no modern society can prosper and make significant progress without first and foremost acknowledging the unquestioned supremacy of the law.

For years, the government has been blamed for its leniency in imposing existing laws, which caused substantial damage to its standing and prestige.

There is a point where this should stop, no matter what the considerations are.

It might be understandable that some leniency is shown by the government to people creating their own means of survival, even if not exactly within the law, at a time of rising unemployment and difficult living conditions across the country.

But that is dangerous and shortsighted. It undermines the law in the eyes of the public, and that does not stop at a certain limit.

Breaking, or even compromising the rule of law is dangerous under any and all circumstances. One simple violation leads to a much more serious one. Tolerating one violator encourages many others. The more the phenomenon is allowed to last the more it becomes difficult to confront.

We are at this stage now. There has been too much leniency and delay in dealing with violations. The problem kept growing and developing its own logic and dynamic.

Street stalls are only a small part of a much larger problem. They should be regulated. Cities worldwide allow for weekly markets and reserve space for that. 

The city of New York, for one, blocks main avenues for a Sunday market, a flea market, a food market or a carnival.

Every European city does the same. But it is all regulated by law and no violations are ever overlooked. People start at a certain hour, they occupy a rented space and they leave and clean behind when market time is over.

GAM may soon have to tackle another problem: preparing sidewalks for the purpose they were created for.

Some observers described Amman as the most-unfriendly pedestrian city. That is true. But pavements are not abused by street vendors only. People block pavements in front of their houses by using them as their own car park. They plant unsuitable trees and build obstructive brick basins around them in a manner that makes the pavement impossible to use for walking.

That is why people hardly walk on the sidewalks, preferring the road with the risks and hazards involved.

Imagine the battle the municipality has to prepare for when the time comes to stop people using public property, specifically roadsides, as if their own.

The road is public property. It should not be used at will as free permanent parking space by the public without rules that can guarantee order and justice.

When people choose to use their parking space where they reside, which is required in every building by law, for other purposes, using the road to park cars instead, they should be made to pay for that and put proof of payment for regular inspection on their windshield. That is the regular practice in every city in the world.

Motorists in Amman park their cars anywhere there is space, no matter how much obstruction and traffic jams that creates.

There should be electronic parking meters with heavy fines for violators. This is the only way to discourage chaotic parking.

Any such move will be strongly resisted because we are used to being spoiled. Unfortunately, there is not much room for delaying authorities’ action in putting a drastic end to lawlessness.

The message authorities should send is that once a decision is taken, it should be implemented.

No amount of protesting should impede strict law enforcement any more, and protesters should never be allowed to use weapons against the police. This is a horrifying trend that should be widely condemned, and instantly. 

This should be the start, loud and clear, that is taken all the way to the end.

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