Lessons of history unheeded

I wrote the following 2 years ago, on 01 August 2009 in a post titled Anti-ISA protests magnified by FRU suppressions. The protest was not by Bersih on fair elections but about another issue, the ISA.

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Very stressful, hasn't it been in today's march against the ISA? Stressful for both the government and the protestors.

However, the organizers of the protest have assessed today's anti-ISA staged rallies as a success, and they are right. They have successfully captured the nation's and international attention that the Malaysian people are against the government's misuse of the ISA.

And the ar$eluck for the governmet is that this would be the general impression even if only 25% of the people supported the anti-ISA movement.

Worse, the attempted police suppression of the protesors has only martyr-ised each and every one of the participants ... exactly the outcome the Pakatan leaders would have wanted.

The government might have wished the protest rallies hadn't ocurred but alas, it did. In my opinion, the ministers (PM, Home and Information) handled the protests abysmally.

Visualize an alternative scenario - what if the government had allowed the peaceful protest to proceed unimpeded?

Yes, there would still be a protest march and ..... [consider an absence of the FRU with all its attention grabbing characteristics like chemical spraying machines, tear gas and praetorian guards and their baton charges] ..... then what???

The political effect would be very much, indeed significantly, reduced.

So why has the government chosen the option that could only aggravate and magnify the public dramas and political consequences of the anti-ISA rallies, unwittingly lending the Pakatan-led protestors far greater attention than would have been the case if there was no police/FRU interference.

Sometimes I wonder how stupid the relevant ministers had been to adopt such a counter-productive (for them) tactic - but more often that that, I wonder whether the Police had sinisterly, sinuously and successfully sold those dumbos the hardline approach ... obviously to enhance their own (police) importance and to suck the (so-called) political masters (or more likely, pundee morons) into total dependence on the men in blue.

And of course the IGP gets another highly undeserved extension to his contract.


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Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it - George Santayana