The New Zealand government and not just the New Zealand police is in “uncharted territory” of dealing with fringe elements at the Covid-19 protest at the parliament.
The protest at the parliament has entered its sixth day, and till now, the police’s measured enforcement action, speakers’ water sprinklers, and a combined charge of music and Covid-19 vaccination advertisement has failed to deter their motivation, with the delay, acting in their favour rather against them.
Notably, Wellington Police District Commander Superintendent Corrie Parnell had very early acknowledged that dealing with the protesters’ camping at parliament ground is uncharted territory for the New Zealand police.
However, what Parnell could not state publicly but have been pretty obvious with each passing day of the protest at the parliament - that the New Zealand government is also in uncharted territory in dealing with this new fringe.
The longer the protest continues and dominates the media attention (despite the restrictions imposed on the parliament’s press gallery to cover them), it is likely, that the opposition to the government will get emboldened, without necessarily toeing the line of their core cause – conspiracist views towards Covid-19.
Dealing with the “fringe elements” in a society is never easy for any modern democratic government, as they fell into the quintessential trap of what forms as an appropriate, rational, rightful, or proportionate response to what can be easily construed as disruptive behaviour of the fringe elements for the mainstream society.
For many within ethnic migrant communities of New Zealand who have recently emigrated from other regions of the world, this might not be an entirely new phenomenon as they would have witnessed the governments of the countries from where they would have emigrated, deeply caught-up in dealing with fringe elements of those societies.
For countries like New Zealand, which is gifted with not just a high level of prosperity and unmatched geographical beauty, but also an unrivalled sense of cohesiveness – a source of envy – for many other countries of comparative prosperity, but with an asymmetric difference in the size of economy and country - this is indeed uncharted territory.
In a short time, the ranks of “fringe elements” have been swelled with tactic support from the seemingly tens of thousands of otherwise normal, mainstream Kiwis, who had been recently disenfranchised socially, after taking a personal decision to not take Covid-19 vaccination and thus being out of the purview of the government’s “vaccine-mandate.”
It is this complication that the fringe-elements-led challenge poses to any modern government – disorienting the main nature of the discourse – and eroding the trust and confidence in the government.
It is to say that in the current environment in NZ, which enjoys exceptionally high Covid-19 vaccination rates, any protest seeking to voice concern against the vaccination regime could easily be ignored as something trivial and hence unimportant.
Yet, slowly and quietly, this latest protest movement is giving a credible voice to the other silenced Kiwis who had opted to relinquish their jobs, financial certainty, and future, without realising that this choice would very soon push them beyond the realm of mainstream society - to the fringes.
So what is this Covid-19 protest about?
One could be forgiven – and the Kiwi-Indian community with the tag of being the first to get 100 per cent double jabbed with Covid-19 vaccine could easily fit in that grove – for failing to comprehend that how a mere gathering of 1000 odd conspiracists poses such grave risk of deserving serious attention.
From what has been distilled out in various media reporting, the protest is targeted not against vaccination per se, but the government’s vaccination mandate.
As the government’s around the world have struggled to impose mandatory compulsion on their people to get Covid-19 vaccination in fear of legal repercussions, they have found their way through carefully designed vaccine mandates that would potentially push many people who would have otherwise sat on the fence in terms of accepting Covid-19 vaccines in early experimental stages.
The vaccination mandate is a requirement that says you must be vaccinated to do certain things like working, travelling, or even attending a concert.
A vaccine mandate just means that if you don’t get a vaccination, then businesses, schools, and others can legally stop you from entering the building or using their services if they choose to.
It is this social disenfranchisement that many ordinary working Kiwis are finding themselves in, and without any powerful and reassuring voice in the public debate, that is now swelling the ranks of “fringe elements”-led-protest at the parliament.
With each passing day, more and more Kiwis are forced to mull upon the plight of those newly disenfranchised fellow Kiwis and possibly gain some sympathy with the question if the cost they are forced to pay for choosing to not get vaccinated is really proportionate.
To be fair to the government, neither the Covid-19 virus nor the pandemic is the government’s creation and is only following the most appropriate science-led and evidence-based public health advice.
Regardless though, from time-to-time different governments around the world are forced to face such quandaries of dealing with the “fringe elements” of their respective societies.
It’s just that the New Zealand government is facing it for the first time when other countries have been burning their hands in dealing with their own fringe elements.