People Power In Stadiums

A day after the mass rally protest against ISA, Prime Minister Dato Seri Najib Tun Razak said that the protests caused many inconveniences to the other populace of Malaysia. Traffic jams were massive and many, business affected, the public delayed greatly in reaching their destinations, etc. To solve these inconveniences he said that future protests should be held in places far away from the main town or city center, and the stadiums were the best choice. He said the protesters could shout their voice coarse and do all the heroics.

Well,...ahem... why not? How about throwing in a football match to attract more protesters? Better still, if the match was between the pro and anti participants of the issues there would be reasons to shout the voice coarse! In between the games, you can do the Mexican waves, while yelling out the objections! Wow! What a spectacle that would make! Ho! Ho!

Or, have a concert, with the top celebrities of the nation doing their stuff; singing, ‘jogetting’, rocking, break-dancing or whatever. Dance and shout along your grudges!

Or, have a kart race! Have the opposed issues labeled on the karts separately. Shout your voice coarse. See which issue-kart wins! Have your day!

Have tickets issued to the protest-cum-entertainment functions, with draws, and prizes offered to the winning tickets. A Proton Exora or two, tickets to the football world cup finals in South Africa! Alternatively, several home theatre systems, motor cycles and whatnots. And Wow, again! That would surely pull in protesters in the thousands!

Seriously, the main purposes of the protests are to attract the public’s attention to the issues at hand. This can only be effectively achieved by inevitably giving some discomfort to public at large. Having the protests at an isolated place like the stadiums will only let the issues stay hidden and unnoticed forever. The government or the authorities concerned will tend to give a blind eye to the plights of the people.

The police should not always take protests as a threat to the stability of the nation. In fact suppressing protests will do more harm than good in a civilized world of ours. It will encourage and kindle more protests. The police need to be more people friendly and give permits to parades and protests. Giving permits do not necessarily mean that they are against the government of the day. They would be only carrying out duties as its institution demands. However, conditions should be attached. The protests should not be chaotic and violent in nature. No screaming and yelling should be allowed by the organizers. The crowd should disperse quietly and in an orderly manner when the time limit is up. The place where the protests were held should be as intact as before the demonstrations - nothing broken and no rubbish strewn on the area. The protests should not involve the palaces. It is not right and proper. The people elected the government of the day and why should they run to the palaces whenever there were some grievances? They can always elect the persons or the administrators of the nation that they think can serve them best, at the elections to come.

If the civilities were followed both by the police and the protesters then FRUs, water canons and tear gases would be things of the past.