“….//…I for one can vouch for the bona fide of the peaceful gathering tomorrow and that there is no intention whatsoever by anyone to create any untoward incident…//…” – YB Kit.

Everyone disaffected with the present government will naturally support Bersih, whether by joining the walk or cheering as bystander on the sideline.

I am also sure that those who gather there to march, especially the organizers, are determined that the proceedings will be peaceful and they have given assurances such – but intention is one thing but what might happen may be unintended. One risk that you cannot discount is the outbreak of violence.

One thing, one does not know who will mingle into the crowd to join the march. They could include government agent provocateurs, mischief makers, mat rempits, the foreigners etc.

Another is the determination of the authorities to stop the march.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has vowed to crack down on a planned mass rally in Kuala Lumpur tomorrow and gave his support to the police to break up the protest and arrest participants. 4,000 police personnel have been mobilized.

Peaceful march – or street demonstrations : what’s the difference?

Street demonstrations are generally not a culture of those disaffected with the government here and the government will have every resolve to ensure that such a culture does not catch on, setting a precedent.

They are really worried as it has been proven in neighbouring countries that massive street demonstrations had forced Marcos and Estrada from office in Philippines, Thaksin and Suharto from power in Bangkok and Suharto respectively!

To march to HM Yang DiPertuan Agong’s palace to present the memorandum is to indirectly tell the elected governmment that it has no more legitimacy and hence an appeal is made to the King to intervene. It represents a slap in the government’s face.

So the authorities will do whatsoever in their power to stop the march and if the marchers are equally determined to proceed with the march deemed illegal because no permit has been given nor will it be given, what we are witnessing here on the eve of this grand expression of Malaysian Democracy is a headlong confrontation and an inevitable potential clash!

No one can say for sure that in such a clash, violence will not break out or escalate between uniformed personnel and crowd. It can happen! Not only the potential for injuries is present but so will the possibility of an immediate crackdown AKA Operation Lallang style in its wake immediately putting a brake on whatever nascent freedom of expression being experimented so far by the Pak Lah’s administration.

Promoters and organizers of Bersih must calculating that on the eve of general election the government cannot afford a clash and therefore the police will relent and let marchers have their way to make the moral point rather than risk skulls being cracked, bones being fractured and blood being spilled (not to mention the bad erffect on foreign investments in the Northern, Southern and Eastern Corridors) but notwithstanding such calculations, it is still a gamble and I would not discount entirely the worst case scenario happening!

The march, not sanctioned by the police – and hence technically an unlawful assembly – is an act of defiance to “test waters” – the will of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

The main counter strategy of authorities is to stop intending participants from entering the city and gathering at Dataran in the first place. Because once a huge number is gathered there, the crowd becomes hard to control when they start the march. The city will therefore likely be cordoned off by road blocks. They are concerned with PAS’s followers – who are more experienced and daring with street demonstrations – hence all motorists and buses from East Coast via Karak Highway – will be screened and turned back.

The key to the march taking off in a significant way boils down to logistics : how do the organisers circumvent the police cordons being erected at strategic perimeters of entry points to the City! Is there a “plan B” – are there sufficient meeting points outside the city and the cordons to come in via LRT or roads unmanned by road blocks?

The LRT will be packed and key exit points (eg Majek Jamek) will see heavy police presence.

The fact that “yellow” is the colour of protests makes it easier to identify who to turn back. The police tasks are so march harder if organizers do not make “yellow the colour” because then there’s no way to differentiate demonstrators from others entering the city for normal economic activities. They will have to fenced off and shut down the city at great economic costs.

The whole success or failure will hinge on issue of logistics.

Everyone should understand that Bersih is by origination a political proposition conceived by a political party like PKR, and necessarily have to be supported by political members, parties or sympathizers in the alternative front.

Whatever support Bersih gets from NGOs and human rights civil society is but ancillary to what is essentially a partisan political demonstration. Suhakam has not given the definitive word that it supports this. Although the Bar Council organized the Bar’s Walk for Justice, it does not direct its members to attend Bersih demonstration whilst respective political parties like PKR, PAS and DAP do!

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said that it was not the Malaysian way to have street demonstrations and that change should be effected through constitutional means of the ballot box via general election.

The organizers have countered this by saying that the ballot box has been rigged with gerrymandering, phantom voters etc that hence the electoral process itself does not provide the level playing field for democratic expression, which is why the march is organized – to demand reform of the electoral process.

There are various problems here.

First why to the Yang di-Pertuan Agong? Has the King the royal prerogative or constitutional power to override the government to reform the electoral process?

Secondly, the police have, rightly or wrongly, not given the permit for the gathering ala demonstration – which makes the assembly an illegal one, and participation thereof contrary to law.

The argument as I understand it is again the law has been used by powers-that-be to stifle lawful dissent and demonstration and constitutional right to assembly; the argument as I understand it is to justify the breaking of the law based on the higher moral imperative of civil disobedience Gandhi style to pressure for change!

Then there is this objection – what happens if the big crowd gets out of control and a riot happens? There will be injuries; property damage and even lives lost. Who will bear responsibility for this?

This has a very high risk of happening when neither Bersih nor the authorities would stand down and each inevitably heads for what is inevitably a dangerous collision course!

Bersih’s position is that the police should have given the permits to assemble applied for. Once given, the assembly is legal with risk of confrontation immediately diffused. The argument is that in all or most cases of permit being given or at least a non-interventionist approach being taken by the police, Special Branch and FRU, there will be no violence and demonstration will be peaceful.

Such an argument ignores two realities:

The first is that the organizers cannot vouch for certain all kinds of mischief makers, Mat rempits the foreigners co-mingling amongst the crowd. Even the government itself cannot control certain section or reactionary faction within it, desiring an end to relatively freer culture of public expression to plant, their provocateurs to instigate trouble to maximize chances of an official crackdown in the interest or pretext of public order..

Secondly as I said, this is not a Western Country or government, and the powers-that-be will not allow a march to the palace to underscore the legitimacy of an elected government, no matter how flawed the electoral process might have been. It will not tolerate an open defiance of the law and the government, setting an unprecedented way of effecting change through demonstrations, a throw back from the earlier Reformasi demonstrations when Anwar was incarcerated and of which PKR/PAS have the organisational skills in organising protests of these sorts which the authorities are wary of.

This kind of thing also raises in the government’s calculations the spectre of what happened in neighbouring countries of Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand where Marcos, Estrada, Suharto and Thaksin respectively had been deposed by force of massive demonstrations in circumvention of the Constitutions.

For these reasons, it appears that the clash and ensuing violence are not remote at all this afternoon if neither side gives in to the other.

If the worse happens, something akin to Yangon albeit smaller scale, what has been done as a way forward in Democracy may just turn out as a way immediately backward providing the very pretext needed by the government (or at least that section of it opposed to democratic reform) to end the PM’s nascent experiment of tolerating a freer public debate culture and use the ISA to clamp down ala Operation Lallang style all organisers opposition leaders and dissidents like RPK under the excuse of public order…..

The only thing that can avert this will be divine intention : if and when thunderstorms douse the demonstration at the appointed time.

Typo correction : “divine intervention” not “intention”.

“…//…I’m familiar with your name Lee, because you did come on to this blog not too long ago. I think you’re among the youngest to be doing a Ph.D. and in Cambridge and as Malaysians, you made us proud…//…” – DarkHorse

FYI, Lee Wang Yen is currently a PhD student at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, completing his PhD thesis in abductive arguments for scientific realism. His research interests include confirmation theory, Bayesianism, inductive and abductive inferences, theories of justification, and the implications of these issues for scientific realism in the philosophy of science, and natural theology and religious epistemology in the philosophy of religion. He is also interested in metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophical logic, philosophy of mind, and philosophical theology. He has published in journals since his undergraduate years.

Well thanks for the clarifications in this thread Wang Yen, hope the above is accurate, and you don’t mind. I associate with DarkHorse’s comments that “this blog would be all the poorer without your contribution”…. :)