WARRIORS OF STREET PROTEST.

There was a bit of commotion at the Summit USJ that I had to decide whether to stop the car to find out what was it all about, or drive on to meet a guy who said he could get me a lucrative contract supplying the oil and gas equipment to a company linked to someone higher up. There was no need to think really, since KUB would decide not to get into the oil and gas business. I figured the news was going to upset the shareholders since the company had announced a few months back that they were going to buy Kejuruteraan Samudra Timur Bhd. And so I called up the guy to call off the meeting and told him to check the news report next couple of weeks if he wanted to find out the full story on KUB.

And so I stopped the car to join the angry crowd who was there to protest over something that affected their life in a big way and I found out soon enough that it was about a toll hike that had been recently announced by some high-powered minister in some high-powered office. I haven't lived in the the city long enough to feel the pinch of paying tolls but the street protest really had me piqued since there were women and children in the crowd whom I believe hadn't the faintest idea the kind of trouble they had gotten themselves into. The riot police were on stand-by, fully geared to handle the mood of the crowd who may turn for the worse since it was a hot day with humidity close to 80%. A couple of guys in the crowd got excited and this prompted the men in blue to close in on one of them, bringing the poor guy down in a move they had been trained for. They got him in the knees with the baton which brought him down like a tower when the base is blown off with high explosive. He twisted like a night crawler on fire, almost coiling himself into a complete knot, handcuff locked tight at the wrists. Two women were hauled in and I saw the worried look on their faces. A few well known figures from the opposition were there, but they were not physically militant. I saw a guy surrounded by the riot police, their shields up and the batons ready, waiting for the guy to make a wrong move so they could land a heavy duty boot on the face. I know this move too well. But nothing happened. In the end they got him by the arms.

Maybe you have never spent a night in jail. Or maybe you have never been hit in the face, ribs, groin or legs by anyone. Lemme give you a piece of advice, the last thing you wanna do on a hot day like that was to be hauled in by the police into their big red truck and driven to a police station before they lock you up for a week with the rest of the common criminals like burglars, rapists, thieves, drunks, drug addicts, or suspected murderers. You may think you can take on the riot police, having studied all the martial arts in the world, or you may think you know where to hit. But think for a second, take a good look at the guy with the shield the size of a coffee table. He is fully protected, all the vital points in his body are guarded with the kind of material that's strong enough to take your best front kick, but flexible enough for him to move in on you after you've delivered your best shot. He's got the back of his neck covered, the knees, the elbows and the face. For crying out loud, he's an expert in how to use his shield both as a weapon and as a device to protect himself against whatever you've got going for him. My advice is, when they come after you like a pack of hyenas, you'd better roll up your body into a fetal position like that of a child in a womb and pray they don't break your ribs, or their heavy boots won't dislodge your jaws.

I have lived long enough to know that when the government decides to do something, you'd better live with the fact that nothing you do or say will ever make them change their mind. They decided to go ahead with the National Service Program so fast you didn't have time to read what was it all about. Before you know it, the whole thing got off the ground and so far the programme has made a lot of people rich, from caterers to camp owners, bus owners, uniform suppliers. And now the toll hike. You know that they are going to hike it up from time to time and nothing you do, especially street protest, will make them change their mind. That's how the whole thing works. The people higher up got an idea to start a massive national scale project, and then the people connected to them work out the profit and profit account, and then they got the approval from the cabinet and the whole thing get started real quick from there. That's how it is, and that's how it's gonna be and there is nothing we can do about it. Everyone knows it and it is no longer a secret. In fact it has become Standard Operation Procedure that we have come to accept like a good citizen that we are.

Will this ever come to a stop? Not likely since the people who turned up at Summit USJ to voice their protest represented something like 0.001% of the population. Since politics is about numbers, this number is too small to be taken seriously and who is more qualified to crunch this number into dust other than the ever efficient riot police.

I didn't wait for the crowd to disperse because I saw what I needed to see and it was not a pretty sight to see innocent people being treated that way.

I don't know what got me that day but I failed to view the whole street protest thing as a comedy that played itself out to a full-length movie. Maybe I should do less business to maintain my sense of humor. Am I becoming less and less humorous since I got into this business thing? Lemme go figure, but first lemme have some of this Sumatran coffee down. Where was I?