I refer to your report 2,000 vent anger over fuel price hike .

Congratulations to the police, who seem to have learned a thing or two about handling demonstrations from their recent human rights course.

Friday's peaceful march in KL, protesting the hike in petrol, diesel and gas prices, was completed according to plan without any untoward incident or disruption of public order, despite drawing a large crowd.

For the first time in a long while a rally organised by, among others, opposition parties, was not broken up roughly before it could even get under way. This seems to confirm what the opposition parties have always claimed - that it was harsh police action which caused trouble, not the rally itself.

Hopefully, the police will be encouraged by this success, though it would be even better if in the future, they could lose their heavy (and the FRU's) presence.

Hopefully, too, our government will continue to open up the democratic space in this country so that our people can finally be allowed to enter the 21st century, with the full range of institutions of civil society in place at last.