There is no dispute that the Constitution guaranteed the right of peaceful assembly, nor that the law regulated it through prior notification to preserve the balance between the right, public order and the limits of others; I am one of those who believe in both the right and its regulation; the dispute is not about the right but about who uses it, and on whose behalf.
When members of a profession stand on the steps of their syndicate to defend their demands, that may be acceptable; but when the scene becomes a stage from which the messages of a particular group are run, and slogans are raised that have nothing to do with the profession or its general assembly, then we are facing a syndicate that is borrowed, not practised, and a headquarters used as a cover, not a platform.
In this context we recall a movement called (Kefaya) in 2004, whose platform was the steps of the downtown syndicates, with no benefit to the members of those syndicates but the achievement of particular goals.
The irony is that the owners of the house are the last to be asked. The member who elected his council to manage his pension and services is surprised to find his syndicate’s name heading statements he has not read, and his professional capacity used in chants he has not repeated. As if the steps, after being a means of ascent, have become a ladder for others to climb on their shoulders.
Then we are told that all this is a “right”, and the right is innocent of it. The guaranteed right does not need to borrow a platform that is not its own, nor to use a professional capacity out of place.
Whoever wants to raise his political slogan, let him raise it in his own name, under his own banner and with his own notification, not in the name of a syndicate that has not mandated him, nor on steps whose price he has not paid.
Respect for the constitutional right begins with respect for its limits: a syndicate for the profession and its members, an arena for politics and its people, and steps for those who climb them by right, not by proxy. I call for full compliance with the law and its enforcement, while benefiting from previous experiences.
