The real instigators behind all the protests and demonstrations that we have experienced are not the party leaders, whose parties had lost badly in the last general election, save for some seats which allowed them to form the government of some states.

They are not Anwar Ibrahim, Abdul Hadi Awang, Nik Aziz Nik Mat and Lim Kit Siang. And the few others including their second and third echelon leaders wannabe whose real job for now is to do whatever they possibly can purely to impress their senior leaders that they are also firebrand and can be trusted to carry the dark lights they have been carrying all this while.

What can the DAP, PKR and PAS do without the help of the mainstream media as well as those party organs they control arbitrarily? Nothing.

The opposition leaders will remain major characters in their party organs, and whose statements can never ring loudly. Their slogans will also sound hollow.

But with national media attention and coverage, all of them will sound loud and their size three or four times larger, so much so that they are able to taunt even the editors of the national or mainstream media for not having done their bidding for them.

Everything happens courtesy of the mainstream media, which has of late become too enamoured with acts which look subversive to be real or reported for pure journalistic entertainment.

They are definitely not the real instigators of the protests and demonstrations. They are just pawns in the vicious game of six-pence.

The real instigators are the editors of the print and electronic media. And if there are people who are now qualified to be arrested under the ISA for instigating the public and other innocent bystanders to become rude and harsh, it is they, the small group of people amounting not more than 20.

They are the ones who have been instigating the people to take to the streets, by encouraging them. What they do may seem to be an indirect act, but to me, it is very direct. Go out and we create the news for you. This is their punch line.

It is all in the name of the freedom of the press, they say. But in Malaysia, who defines this sort of freedom? Do we use the definition created by the Americans?

The Americans, do not hold protests and demonstrations without permits and only in Washington Park or Central Park in Washington DC and New York City, while the English have theirs at Trafalgar Square.

They do not aim to belittle anyone with their empty slogans. They also have real causes, and they often do not involve party leaders whose parties had been trounced in the last general election.

How many of those who had lost in their elections would dare speak loudly in public? They now have to face the fact that they lost is prove that they are not needed.

In Malaysia, most of those whose parties lost badly in the polls are the ones who are shouting the most.

And yet, they think they are the ones who are observing democracy in practice. The truth is they are the ones who are trampling on it.

The real democratic process happens in an election and not after it, when the counting is done.

I think it is time for the Home Ministry to withdraw the publishing permits of mainstream newspapers and national television for having done untold damage to the country.