MP Saud’s remark over colleague’s hair gel becomes Twitter sensation

AMMAN — A new sarcastic hashtag about a spat between two lawmakers was trending on Twitter on Wednesday.

Under the hashtag “#”????_???_??? — which roughly translates into “curse your hair gel” — tweeps criticised deputies Yihya Saud and Motaz Abu Rumman.

On Tuesday, Abu Rumman faulted Lower House Speaker Atef Tarawneh for asking him to give short comments at the session.

Abu Rumman protested that Tarawneh allowed other MPs to speak longer and said the speaker was bullying him while being lenient with other deputies.

This prompted Saud to criticise Abu Rumman’s “hairgel”.

On Wednesday, Abu Rumman issued a statement in which he apologised to Tarawneh.

“I wish I could meet one of those who vote for [Saud] to understand how they think,” @Danajihad tweeted in Arabic on Wednesday. Mohammed Hussainy (@MohamedHussainy) said Saud invented a new swear word.

“Thank God I don’t use hair gel, and so no one can swear at me the same way,” he tweeted.

Twitter is becoming a platform for users to mock the performance of lawmakers and satirically criticise their behaviour.

“This is ridiculous. Everyday there’s some new trend coming from the Lower House,” tweeted Abdalrahman Alboti (@jordanmartchel).

Shadi Rawashdeh ‏(@sh_rawashdeh) jokingly said Twitter should pay Saud, a controversial deputy known for several disputes with his colleagues, for the hashtags he keeps inspiring.

In December last year, Saud was attempting to voice his opinion over a remark made by MP Abdul Majid Aqtash criticising Arab nationalist parties, when Deputy Hind Al Fayez stood up and started shouting at him.

“Sit down Hind, sit down… May God inflict revenge on whoever approved the [women’s] quota,” Saud shouted.

The phrase “sit down Hind” turned into an Internet meme shared on social media to mock the incident. The memes went viral and caught the attention of major international media outlets such as the BBC and CNN.

Saud also had a spat with Abu Rumman in 2013, when he criticised him for interrupting remarks by the prime minister during a House session, with the two MPs scuffling and hurling objects at each other.

Saud also scuffled with lawmaker Qusai Dmeisi in a similar incident that year.

On Sunday, the fate of a cat that interrupted a Lower House evening session was a topic of conversation among social media users.

Some objected to the cat’s “maltreatment” as a Parliament employee carried it by its tail to take it outside the chamber, while others criticised the “big fuss” made about the cat, as if lawmakers have “nothing else to do”.