IS DEMONSTRATIONS THE EFFECTIVE WAY TO BRING CHANGES?

This is a question posed to me by a friend recently and i began to ponder seriously on this question.

My take is that there are two sides to the coin.

Lets take two countries i.e Indonesia and Philippines as examples. I frequently go to Indonesia whether on business or for vacation. There I observed you can easily assembled thousands of ready made"demonstrators" to demonstrate on whatever issues that irked you and the favourite spot is at the roundabout in front of the Grand Hyatt Hotel. As an organizer what you need is to give your "demonstrators" t shirts of what ever colour that you choose and packets of food for them to eat. With that they will carry the banners that you have prepared. They will also shout out aloud whatever the slogans and battle cries that you want them to shout.

At the end of the day you get whatever the message that you want to highlight to the authorities and the "demonstrators" get their free t shirts and lunch for the day. Tomorrow they will be available for another "demonstration" with another organizer who have other issues. He will have to provide them again with free t shirts and free lunches. Thats the game.

Likewise in the Philippines the same thing happens more or less along the same concept. Get the poor peoples in the slums who are always ever ready and available to take part in "demonstrations". What they need are the t shirts and the free lunches.

Even in India such things happens.

The common denominator of these countries are that almost 70% of their populations are poor either unemployed or underemployed. Only 30% forms the upper and middle class of their societies. And these counties have large populations.

In Malaysia our middle class is very strong. We can see that most of the urban middle class voters are very anti establishment and they are not afraid to show it. Hence we can see the Chineses-majority areas in the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur voted in the DAP year in and year out. Nothing surprising. The reasons are best known to the voters themselves.

So why the recent demonstrations? My take on this is that it is to galvanize the Malay voters. But here I beg to disagree with the modus operandi of the event. To my view the majority of Malays still believe that only UMNO and Barisan Nasional can give them the protection and security in the complexity of our multiracial and multicultural Malaysian society. The issues in the judiciary and other issues have more impact on urban voters while rural voters- the base of UMNO, think these issues as secondary.

Of more importance to them are the opportunities in the various corridor developments launched by the PM. These are looked upon positively and great anticipation by the rural Malay heartland. Hence the people are still with the government.

It is not that I totally do not believe in a multiracial party like the PKR. Butwhile political parties like DAP claimed they are multiracial, they tend to harp on issues affecting the Chinese. And DAP is a Chinese-based and Chinese- dominated party. Likewise also Gerakan and PPP. They are only multiracial in name but are Chinese-based and Indian based respectively . Thus to me a so called multiracial party like the PKR will over time become either a Malay based or Chinese based party.

We also have remember that the number of participants in demonstrations can be very misleading. A good example is Turkey. When the ruling AK Party nominated the then Foreign Minister Mr Abdullah Gul for the presidency there way a huge demonstrations in the millions by the secularists in Istanbul against his nomination as they perceived him to be an Islamist and trying to change the secular set-up of Turkey. But when there was deadlock and a general election was held, the AK Party won a huge majority of the seats in Parliament. Subsequently today we have President Abdullah Gul of Turkey.

I suppose I will have to tell my friend that having demonstrations in a free and independent country like Malaysia is not the effective way to bring changes. The numbers can be misleading as seen in the case of Turkey.

There are regular general elections within every five years when the government of the day will have to seek a fresh mandate to rule the country. This would be the right time to bring any changes, if ever the people want them.