Collateral damage from elections

-- Just as is the case every time, there are ads which are inspired by the political climate. As Beirut/NTSC predicted earlier about the death - as a brand - of our local Almaza, the last four nails in the coffin have been delivered. The campaign speaks of political idioms which are totally related to the elections but fails to address the correlation between them and the intrinsic qualities of the product or the brand. "Mahdale intikhabiyye" reads one - a term coined by the speaker of the parliament speaking of the landslide victory of the alliance between his party Amal and the Hizbullah in the south. In practical terms it refers to the machine that compresses the asphalt once it is put on the road. The second says, "bil tazkyeh" which is when a candidate wins for the lack of contestants. Even in Arabic in is written wrong using a different kind of "z" - so there's a huge typing mistake there. Moving on to "tayyar el ara3weshrin" - the current of the 24 - which is some mixture between Tayyar el mistaqbal (future movement), tayyar el watani el hurr (free patriotic movement), 14th of March coalition blended into a number that signifies the total bottles present inside an Almaza box. Last, comes "ketle wassatiye" - a "middle block" - which was a suggested move from the president of the Republic to create a buffer zone inside the newly elected parliament. The move was still-born but the term is still being used by anyone wishing to camoflage his political inclinations and is also used for something without taste or odor - so go figure! The other ad inspired by elections is Magma which expresses the non-chalence of youth towards this political process which may or may not be true in such a devided and charged country.