In response to J Allen Otten's letter, 'Write, not disrupt your way to change' (May 16), I would like to state that the wave of rallies in recent years has nothing to do with us being a developing nation. There are many developing countries that are able to exercise democratic principles widely, where their opposition leaders do not have to worry about being arrested solely because of differences in political views.

It is our dream, that one day all of us will be able to express our opinion freely without fear of retribution. Instead of merely dreaming about it, some of us are trying to make it happen. It should be applauded and embraced.

Indeed, Malaysia is not alone, but increasingly, one will find that she is in less and less company. Nowadays, Mahathir has to resort to embracing Castro (Cuban president who visited us last week).

The world is changing everywhere, and one by one, dictators come crumbling down. More and more, former opposition leaders find their way to power by winning fair elections. It comes after a long and hard struggle, where countless have lost their lives in the name of democracy.

Take South Korea and president Kim Dae Jung as an example. He is there today mainly through years of struggle and demonstrations from different quarters of the society. Yes, sometimes those demonstrations turned violent and ugly.

And when you talk about traffic, Seoul is much worse compared with its counterpart here, KL. But without those public outcries, today's Korea will still be under an ironfisted regime - the likes of Chun Do-hwan, Roh Tae-woo, etc.

We cannot change anything by merely writing eloquent letters to those power-hungry legislators and ministers. We have to do more, much more than that and here I must stress that I do not promote violence.

I am merely urging people to take part in voicing what they stand for louder. By simply preserving the status quo, they are doing a great injustice to their future generations.

One reason why opposition members around the world in many 'Third World' countries have to resort to demonstrations is due to the lack of information access to the public. From where the writer came from, both sides of the political divide are able to buy TV time and have access to media exposure without any barriers.

Look at how things are around you. The government controls the media; none of the mainstream media publications has ever said anything good about the opposition. The opposition are reduced to traitors and, at best, clowns, in the mainstream media.

The government is currently even tinkering with Internet control. Now tell me, where will this lead to?

The writer suggested that corruption and nepotism happen everywhere. There is truth in it, but in those western countries, those who point out the problem do not get jail time.

Processes are much more transparent, and those involved in the clique many times landed in jail or ended up being fined - for example, Helmut Kohl, James Huang and Webster Hubbell. At the very least, the leaders who were involved became embarrassed and had to stay low for months (most recently, Bill Clinton in his post-presidency era, over the pardons issue).

Now, can any of us expose our great leader in such a way here? Dream on! is the likely retort.

But some of us refuse to dream on, we want to do something about it, and writing a letter simply just won't do the trick!

The writer is trying to argue against demonstration because it will cause traffic delays. It is a classic example of soliciting short-term gain for a huge future loss. Such inconvenience for the huge ultimate reward should be embraced.

One cannot compare inconveniences to the basic right of the whole population. It is simply incomparable.

I can accuse him to be a person who doesn't care about the plight of Malaysian citizens, that he only wants conveniences while he is in this country. But I won't do that because the mere fact that he wrote his letter showed me that he cares about the society. We have our differences; I just think his ideas won't do it here.

Look, Carter tried a similar approach when dealing with the USSR before, by threatening wheat embargo over its attack on Afghanistan. Where did that effort lead the Russians to? Kabul.

You can't talk peace to somebody who doesn't want it. Now, replace the word peace in the previous sentence with democracy, freedom of speech, etc.