Achieving goals amidst the right to protest
The increasing number of protests countrywide must surely be, as far as the Government is concerned, an unwanted and unwarranted headache on top of having to grapple with mounting issues at home and abroad. Some of these protests are politically motivated, but some are spontaneous, motivated purely by self-interest involving their livelihoods; all part and parcel of the ' noise and chaos' of a democracy testing the patience of a Government on the edge and keeping it on its toes.
The strategy to counter these protests is getting to be somewhat ham-handed and clumsy. The recent requests to the Police chief to take to task those engaged in street demonstrations on the grounds that they are violating quarantine regulations under the COVID-19 pandemic, and the legality of acting on a mere request letter of a public servant is a bad precedence, and under serious scrutiny. In making such a request, the health officials may have even overstepped their own lawful regulations of October 2020 in the process. They were clearly under “orders from the top”. The Police is topping this request up with the Penal Code provisions on 'unlawful assembly' to quash these mini-uprisings.
Video footage of the manner in which the Police used strongarm tactics to break up some demonstrations this week didn't look good and ultimately did no favours to the Government. It even did more harm than good for the very quarantine laws in place because of the bodily contact between the coppers and the demonstrators, notwithstanding the fact that both were wearing masks. The latter seem wiser to the earlier Police strategy of arresting protestors for not wearing masks. When in some other parts of the country, long queues of people lining up for their vaccine jabs were breaking all the social distancing rules, this exercise of breaking up demonstrations on the grounds of quarantine laws was made to look farcical. Yesterday’s relaxation of rules to open cinemas and hold weddings add to the irony.
While the politically backed protestors received the third-degree treatment ( the Government has just introduced new anti- torture laws), countrywide demonstrations in smaller numbers and less vocal, but positively more sincere, kept snowballing. Lots on the fertiliser ban were happening. With their elected representatives from the Government compromised, the message from these farmers in the different electorates was meant to resonate in high places in Colombo.
The President is on one-track to stop the import of chemical fertiliser; and the farmers -- big and small -- are howling. The hurrah boys talk of the cancer causing ingredients resulting from the use of chemical fertiliser but the weight of evidence from social, economic, plant and agricultural experts is heavily stacked towards the view that a sudden switch to organic fertiliser would have disastrous consequences. While tea, rice, vegetable and other farmers fear crop losses, some even predict prospects of famine at the extreme. Medical experts say the food pipe is not the main cause of cancer in the country, though it is one of them.
Even in military strategy, there is a time for tactical retreats. The overall objective is the end-game. Not the battles but the war. The President knows that best. In the meantime, the Government might lay some greater emphasis on bringing the Fertiliser Manufacturing Corporation plant that was sold for scrap not long ago, and other agro-industrial plants, even those that once manufactured mamoties and the like, back to the fore. It is all about achieving the Government's otherwise holistic objective in a better planned and scientific way, while maintaining democratic freedoms and the right of protesting.