People Power
Ruminating the necessity of People Power and some thoughts on how to foster such a creation in Malaysia.
No human being should enslave another. In the 21st century, this much is clear. No one should rule over another, as a king would his subjects. That is, surprisingly, less clear, even into the 21st century.
All peoples are entitled to self-determination and self-governance. This is democracy’s ideology. It follows that power must belong to the people.
Because it is unworkable to have everyone directly involved in the job of governance, the people have no choice but to elect their representatives to carry out the tasks for them. In order that these duties can be effectively performed, the people again have no choice but to delegate and confer their power unto their representatives.
This is where the people’s miseries begin. The people’s representatives, having tasted the sweetness of power and having gained experience on how to manipulate the masses so as to remain in power, become the people’s trustees only in name. In practice, they turn into little kings and emperors. They acquire a delicate skill of pretending to protect the people’s interest, when in fact they are working only for their own.
Therefore, small groups of ordinary persons have to organize themselves, forming NGOs to battle these modern-day emperors. Different NGOs may be advocating different causes, but they all have something in common. They seek to return power to the people. They seek to make the people?s voice heard and heeded. They hope to bring true democracy back to the people.
But people power can meet with vastly different fates under different circumstances. Around the same time that the Velvet Revolution became successful, the Tiananmen peaceful demonstrations had a most distressing ending. There were a number of factors that had distinguished success from disaster, the most important of which, sadly, had nothing to do with the power of the masses at all. Rather, it depended on whether or not the ones at the very top of the power pyramid at the material times were willing to train their guns on their own unarmed civilians.
