Kiwianarama

Recent protests over poor quality sign writing.

So fond are the Kiwis of exercising their right to protest that, only yesterday, New Zealand became the first democracy in the world to stage a march for, well.. democracy itself.

But then it was always going to be a long, hard road, the struggle for freedom and democracy, in a country that is already quite free and democratic, thank you very much.

It’s a bit like selling ice to the Eskimos (for which, apparently, there’s also a protest).

Some date the seeds of this national struggle back to the point in history when the vote was granted to “chicks and brown people“, and long, nostalgically, for an era when a man’s democratic voice was directly proportional to the amount of land (or brown people) he owned. Such opinions, fortunately, tend to be held by the fringe elements of society, and are easily kept in check by granting them, say, a provincial Mayoralty and a talk-back radio show – cleverly lulling them into a mistaken sense of self importance, while allowing the rest of us to publicly ridicule them.

But the national sport of protesting is much likelier to be a by-product of New Zealand’s small, fiercely egalitarian (on the outside, at least) society. It goes hand in hand with our enjoyment of referenda, frequent elections, and generally exercising our democratic freedoms harder, sweatier and faster than any one else in the world. When it comes to pounding pavement, or ticking boxes, on any and every issue, New Zealand is the Edmund Hilary, or Bert Munroe, of Western democracy.

It is, in fact, one of the few talents to which we can rightfully claim to lead the world, even without relying on complicated per-capita statistics. But since it’s both illegal under New Zealand law, and downright unfair, to compare ourselves internationally without doing so, here are some spurious, hypothetical scenarios that we’d like to imagine might happen if, per-head-of-population, other countries exercised their democratic rights as much as us;

• The Lincoln Memorial in Washington would probably start to resemble a Soweto shanty, as Million Man Marches and Pro-Life Rallies rotated through in continuous, 4 hourly shifts.
• Tienanmen square would require  a permanent UN peacekeeping force.
• It would be impossible to order a pint in London without completing three referenda on the drinking, voting or shagging age, and..
• Tibet would be so free, they’d by now be protesting themselves back into oppression, just for something to do.

New Zealand even has it’s own word for protesting, Hikoi – a Maori word describing a slow, dignified protest walk that people of all ages and gang colours can enjoy.

But the best thing about the word Hikoi is the way it, like so many other sacred Maori words and place names, can be bastardised by journalists & smart-alec bloggers to suit a range of letters-to-the-editor, white middle-class grievances. Recent examples include the motorcycle protests against ACC levy hikes (known as a Bikoi, or “Hikoi, for bikes”), and the aforementioned “March for Democracy”, calling on the government to re-introduce 100 year jail sentences, legal whipping of children, workhouses, and a range of other Dickensian measures (known as a Dickoi, or “Hikoi.. for Dicks“).

In the face of such irksome, widely exercised democracy, successive New Zealand governments have developed a flair for ignore the nagging wants of it’s people, with an air of detached cool that would make Robert Mugabe swell with pride.

Which, we can only assume, it is equally their democratic right to do.