Public protests: What do they really achieve?

Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly. This is a right closely linked to the right to free expression. This right applies to public protests and demonstrations.

The people in our country enjoy this freedom in full measure and use it extensively since the last Presidential election in January 2015. Hardly a day passes by without news of a number of public protests. This trend was not seen almost a decade prior to January 2015.

Public protests are a common feature and protesters have often attempted and sometimes succeeded to influence policy mak- ing. Public protests similarly play important roles in other established democracies, even in nondemocratic regimes. It serves as a tool to disperse valuable information among citizens and is a distinctive form of communication typically involving a large number of people. The protesters believe that the “power of numbers” allows them to change the policy-makers mind, and affect public decisions.

It’s a healthy democratic way of expressing collective public opinion against impending or already taken political, executive and/or administrative decisions. Yet, it cannot be regarded as a healthy democratic step if taken against due process of justice, exercised by the court of law. Recently we witnessed public protest against the judicial decision of placing a politician in remand custody on charges of misuse of public property.

The right to peaceful assembly cannot be interfered with merely because there is disagreement with the view of the protesters or because it is likely to be inconvenient and cause a nuisance or there might be tension and heated exchange between opposing groups. There is a positive obligation on the state to take responsible steps to facilitate the right to freedom of assembly, and to protect participants in peaceful pro- tests/demonstrations from disruption by others.

Nevertheless, this freedom guaranteed by our constitution will not prevent lawful restrictions being placed on the exercise of these rights by the people. They need to observe these limitations to avoid interference by the state.

When people are instigated and motivated by sheer personal reasons of a single individual having no relevance to public policy to protest, not only do public protests become irrelevant, but they dissipate far too quickly because sooner than later there will be no people or political movement sustaining them.

Do today’s public protests represent anything more than venting of emotion and raw discontent? Can it achieve any change?

Recently the protest at Hambantota against signing of the so-called framework agreement for the development of the harbour and an industrial zone got considerable amount of media attention even as it was broadly denounced by government politicians as pre arranged to disrupt the event taking place there. The protesters viewed it as the exercise of their right. However, the protest was neither imaginative nor effective. It seemed more a performance of sheer exasperation.

In addition many protests hit the streets of Colombo city disrupting traffic and inconveniencing the public.

One cannot help wondering: What do such demonstrations and protests hope to achieve? Raja Wickramasinghe Via e-mail