Protests and Inquiries

Nov 06, 2012 Editorial

The hearings of the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the three deaths during the Linden protests are not officially concluded. Written arguments can still be submitted within the next three weeks and the final report on culpability and compensation is to be issued in January. But we as a society will have to go on regardless. What have we learnt from the experience, up to now?
For one we have a police force that is in urgent need for reform to raise its level of professionalism. Rather than arguing about arcane theoretical matters of governance, the government and Opposition ought to buckle down to accomplish this task. We suggest that the Opposition extract the recommendations from the Symonds and Disciplined Forces Report (among others) and lay it before parliament for action.
Second, we have hopefully learnt something more about protests in our present milieu. Back in August, we offered the following perspective on protests from Juan E. Mendez, a law professor, an adviser on crime prevention to the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, and former president of the International Centre for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) and special adviser on the Prevention of Genocide to Kofi Annan. We repeat it for the benefit of our political elite.
“For the billions of powerless in today’s world, protest is the only way to have their voices heard. That is why international human rights law places a very high premium on freedom of speech, association, and assembly, all of them broadly understood. Vibrant, live democracies are those where all citizens believe they have a stake in the outcomes and consequently feel compelled to voice their opinions through the vehicles available to them. It is no wonder that the politics of protest is livelier in countries that are emerging from tyranny.
“What does protest achieve? The agenda of protesters must be such that can be achieved through genuine debate in a democratic society. At the same time, rarely if ever is that agenda adopted in full, the way protesters envision it; and rightly so, because policy is formulated through the interaction of many opinions and not as a result of pressure.
“Often, protest is a way of preventing some policy option that is considered unfair, and frequently the option is at least modified in view of the protest. So demonstrations may never completely succeed in achieving the goals of the demonstrators; they succeed in allowing them to participate in the process of policy formulation and decision-making, and participation is the democratic ideal.
“Undoubtedly, protest must abide by rules of peaceful coexistence and reasonable regulation. Farmers in Argentina had every right to protest against export taxes (whether the taxes were fair or unfair in the overall context is another matter); but they had no right to block highways and impede the access of food products to the markets.
“Protests should indeed grow in frequency and intensity as necessary, even to the point of bringing down a repressive or unrepresentative government; but they must stop short of forcing a duly elected leader from office. Just as there is a threshold of “legitimacy of exercise” that should be demanded of elected leaders, so also demonstrators must exercise their freedoms of speech and assembly within the constraints of legitimacy of both means and ends.
“Ultimately, protest works if it intelligently combines speech with action and a genuine attempt to persuade rather than simply antagonize. Under such premises, protest will continue to be a viable, indispensable ingredient of democracy for generations to come.”
We believe that the above is very sage advice especially for the leaders of political parties. First and foremost they must allow our democratic institutions to function. Only and only if individuals or groups are being stymied by other groups with inordinate power, should they take to the streets. Unless elections are rigged, why should political parties protest?
The last elections demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that while our democracy may not be perfect (which one is?) political parties can achieve their ends through the ballot box.

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