Protecting Public Properties (Traffic Signs) During Election Campaigns

The first Palestinian elections occurred in 1996, these elections were so important so that all Palestinians territories involved in the elections activities, the candidate and their supporters were very active in the Palestinian arena. Thousands of posters, banners, and brochures were printed and distributed, most of the mentioned materials were glued or hanged using public properties especially traffic signs.

Many organizations (ministry of transportation, traffic police, municipalities, NGO’s,….etc) highlighted this phenomenon through many workshops and meeting, in these workshops the negative effects of hiding the traffic signs by election materials.  However, more effects and coordination among all the concerned parties should be made to address this critical issue taking into consideration that it took municipalities many years to remove the election printed materials, which means waste of money, time and efforts.

Preparation are underway now to conduct the second round of presidential elections and the first round for municipal elections. This would mean, however, filling the streets, squares, cities, towns and camps with thousands of elections printed materials (leaflets and posters).

So, increasing awareness regarding the best ways in distributing the election printed materials is considered crucial in order to keep our environment clean and to protect the public safety.