The right to protest is not a licence to cause mayhem

Though nothing good can be said about last Friday’s senseless riots that resulted in the loss of life and property, with scores injured and the country pushed to the precipice of sectarian turmoil, demonstrations by interest groups is a common form of protest in democracies.

They are the loudest and usually most visible type of protest, and are the key to winning supporters and getting the most inclusive media coverage.

In a protest march, a large number of people — sometimes hundreds of thousands of people — gather to “loudly” make demands as they walk from one symbolic location to another.

A good example is the 1963 March on Washington, where Dr Martin Luther King Jnr delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. There, he raised public consciousness and established himself as one of the greatest orators in US history.

Democracy offers a variety of channels for citizens to participate in the political process. Citizens have the option to pursue their preferred policy outcomes through representatives and institutions or directly through civic disobedience.

In an environment where the predominant form of political participation is institutionalised, actors are much more likely to improve their individual and collective capacities in that arena.

The opposite happens in environments where decisions are heavily influenced by unconventional or even violent activities.

There is a clear negative relationship between the quality of political institutions and the choice of political method, between institutional strength and the individual propensity to use alternative political methods like protests.

And protests are usually more prevalent under weaker institutions, because individuals do not expect to obtain their desired political goals through regular institutional means.

In countries like Kenya, where institutional systems have limited capacity to absorb and process conflict, contentious issues usually find their way to the streets. Street protests become a meaningful way to achieve certain political objectives and to express policy demands.

But in countries with sound institutions, almost all conflicts are processed through the Legislature, the Executive, or the Judiciary, making protests far less relevant to policymaking.

Institutionalisation is a pending chapter in Kenya. A casual examination of Kenyan society reveals, among other things, the deep mistrust in judicial decisions, in security forces, and in political representation, and the exasperated reactions such feelings provoke.

This exasperation has created a negative culture of excesses and recklessness like mob justice and violent protests.

In Kenya, street protests have been key drivers in the making of key policy. The best examples are the constitutional amendments that repealed Section 2(a) to allow multiparty politics following the Saba Saba riots in July 1990; the IPPG agreements; and the establishment of the Grand Coalition Government to end the 2007/2008 post-election violence.

Thus protests, which are largely driven by the low credibility of our political institutions remain an important mechanism for expressing preferences and attempting to influence policymaking.

But the purpose of a street protest is to dramatise a cause or grievance and gain popular support for it. It is never about violently resisting the legitimate authority of the police. It is never about infringing on the rights of others, including those of individual policemen who, too, have inalienable human rights.

Should police interfere and demand an end to a demo, even if their demands are outrageous, the demonstrators have two options: to either disperse peacefully, or to non-violently resist orders by offering themselves for arrest.

Whether or not they contravene the law, the police are a legitimate authority, and fighting them is akin to waging war on the State, the wrong way to advance a legitimate cause.