An Egyptian Candidate Chooses Crazy Tomatoes to Promote His Elections Campaign

By Iqbal Tamimi

Egyptian candidates seeking to win the elections use different methods to promote themselves, aiming to win the votes of the electors. Some erect huge tents, equipped with the loudspeakers to convince the people of their areas that they are their winning ticket to prosperity. In short, election campaigns need funding and extra deep pockets for the competition is fierce. But one Egyptian candidate has chosen a new way of winning the votes along with the hearts through the stomachs of the electors.

A couple of days ago, the Egyptian candidate Abdel-Ghani Al-Jammal tried a new approach to win the votes of Bulaq Dakrur, a district of the capital Cairo, where people are suffering the unbearable soaring prices of essential food items such as the tomatoes, that went up to reach a whopping LE 10-25 per kilo. The ever hiking prices of tomatoes led the vegetable merchants to nickname them ‘The Crazy’.

The candidate, Al-Jammal, found the best policy to win the votes of the poor is by offering them a taste of what it would be like to represent them and make it possible for the crushed people, to buy food at an affordable price. So, he bought 10 tons of tomatoes and made them available on the market for 3 days, at a cost of only LE 3 per kilo, bearing the expenses of transporting, uploading, downloading, packaging and employment involved.

Al-Jammal said that using such method of advertising in his election campaign is far better and more effective than erecting elections signs and printing leaflets. His method of publicity seems to work well. Candidates of other areas of Cairo started demanding of their candidates to add the tomatoes on their election programmes’ lists, and do what Al-Jammal has done, to bring sanity to the ‘Crazy’ tomatoes prices.

This innovative method of campaigning by Al-Jammal came after the government measures failed to control the price rates of essential food items such as the tomatoes that earned its well-deserved title The crazy tomatoes’, as cried by the street vendors.

According to the latest data available from the Food and Agriculture Organization "FAO" Egypt is fourth globally in the production of tomatoes, producing about 7.6 million tons per year, preceded by China of 31.6 million tons, and the United States 11 million Tons, then Turkey, 9.7 million tons.

An Egyptian who preferred not to disclose her name said ‘ I believe what we are witnessing currently is a series of regime sponsored crises like the bread crisis and the educational books crisis, in order to make the people busy before the elections’ time as usual. We got used to such doctored crises since Jamal_AbdlNasir’s rule’.

It seems that it’s going to take more than bringing the ‘Crazy tomatoes’ to its senses to win the support of the Egyptians who are suffering deteriorating conditions in many services, and most of all the freedom of expression.