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Protesters win information war following Malaysia crackdown
Asia Sentinel - April 30, 2012
Both sides were claiming a propaganda victory in the aftermath. Bersih 3.0, the 150-member coalition of NGOs for free and fair elections, said they had accomplished their goal of drawing massive numbers of protesters to the center of Kuala Lumpur in defiance of the ban on assembly in the historic Independence Square.
Government officials said the police had acted responsibly in attempting to control the crowd only to have firebrands charge police lines and overturn a police car. More than 60 protesters were injured along with 11 police, authorities said.
In any case, the event focuses the spotlight on claims that Prime Minister Najib Razak's government has refused to accede to Bersih's recommendations to reform the electoral process.
Those recommendations include cleansing the electoral rolls, reforms of absentee voting, the use of indelible ink to mark voters' fingers to thwart repeat voting, a minimum campaign period of 21 days and fair access to the media.
That proposal is almost impossible to fulfill, since the three major political parties own all the major mainstream news outlets, all of which have been reporting negatively on the protest.
Bersih has complained that only the indelible ink recommendation was accepted. Bersih also complained that the government pushed through a 3 a.m. measure in Parliament to remove the right of candidates or their representatives to observe voter registrations on election day so that opposition leaders would be unable to spot phantom voters. It also removed a requirement that all printed materials bear the name of the printer and publisher on campaign materials.
"The government will likely point to the late confrontation and violence as protester-instigated and try to blame them for the need to use a bit of force," a longtime Western observer said.
"I doubt that view will get much public traction, however. The government will also say they used great restraint, which was true up until the end. We'll know better when arrests and body counts of injured, etc. are known."
For starters, it appeared that the government had miscalculated by banning the rally in the first place.
Home Affairs Minister Hishammuddin Hussein earlier on had said the rally hadn't "gained much traction" and that it wasn't a security threat. However, hard-liners apparently won out, with the Kuala Lumpur city government banning the event only to have protesters show up from all over the country.
It also appeared that police hadn't learned the lessons from Bersih 2.0, the July 2011 rally in which 1,600 people were arrested and many more were beaten and brutalized, earning international condemnation for authorities.
Certainly, the international press again appeared to be firmly on the side of the protesters, with news reports emphasizing police unleashing tear gas and chemical-laced water on Saturday at thousands of demonstrators who demanded fair rules for national elections.
Although Bersih leaders acknowledged they had lost control of the crowd when the rally ended and a group described as "a few hundred" attempted to push past police barriers to enter the square, clearly seeking to provoke and be arrested in an attempt to win sympathy, it appeared that once again police had overreacted, beating, tear-gassing and dousing those left with chemical-laced water from police cannons.
Certainly if the demonstrators were seeking to provoke the police, they got their wish. Both the local and international press were filled with pictures of police battering demonstrators with tear gas, beating and kicking them and dragging them away. Some 488 protesters were arrested. News photographers were arrested and their cameras were confiscated and emptied when they tried to film the violence.
Leaving aside the violence that marred the episode, "I think it shows that the Bersih movement is still on the rise and can pull more and more people into political action," the Western observer said.
"Groups were going into the fray knowing that the government and police had announced that it was banned in advance and that they could be arrested. The demonstrators were clearly not cowed or afraid of the authorities, so that plus the sizeable turnout probably means a 'victory' for protesters."
Also the crowd was mixed ethnically, contradicting pro-government assertions that the backbone was made up of minorities, primarily Chinese. With opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, the Democratic Action Party and Parti Islam se-Malaysia playing a bigger role, the confrontation had a more clearly opposition flavor than the 2011 demonstration.
"The opposition proved once again that they can mobilize and organize a very large multi-racial crowd," another observer said. "Bersih 3.0 was an impressive achievement."
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