It is a common tactic for the guilty to blame the innocent first in an attempt to escape justice. Opposition lawmakers who questioned the police handling of the July 1 protest march did exactly that, during a Legislative Council (LegCo) Security Panel session on Tuesday.

The opposition members of the LegCo Security Panel accused the police of deliberately keeping the exit at Victoria Park narrow to slow the progress of the march and thus to "shrink" the number of participants. Nothing can be more ridiculous and laughable than that! What the police did that day was to keep the crowd under control for the sake of public order and the safety of local residents. That is the responsibility of law enforcement to begin with.

With that in mind, people should remember it is to the police officers' sole discretion how protestors should enter and exit Victoria Park, how the march should proceed along the pre-determined route. And only well-trained police officers with extensive experience in crowd control have the authority to make decisions on security-related technical details at such events, not the "players" and politicians behind the gathering.

What if something had gone amiss that day because police decided to relax control over the situation as demanded by the opposition camp? Would the organizers take responsibility? Of course not. I'll bet those opposition politicians, who are forever accusing authorities of over-zealous law enforcement, would simply take a different tone and slam the police for failing to do their duty. With politicians like that it's "You are damned if you do and damned if you don't."

It's the politicians' game and they'll change the rules on the fly so that they never lose. For example, the organizers broke their own promise on July 1 when they let a group of radical followers lie down to block oncoming traffic at the end of the march. That caused a traffic jam in Central. Then the organizers accused police of using excessive force because officers had to remove the human roadblock.

The author is a current affairs commentator. This is a translation excerpted from her column published in Ta Kung Pao on July 6.

(HK Edition 07/07/2011 page3)