When does political protest become a criminal act?

Did you hear about EggBoy, the young lad from New Zealand who cracked a raw egg against the head of a racist anti-Muslim senator? While his parents and their generation (paging mom!) probably fainted on the spot at the audacity and sheer disrespect shown by the kid (that's Fraser Anning to the world), his generation, the internet generation, laughed uproariously and applauded him for a deed well planned. And executed. And filmed.

Yup, Fraser brought along his own camera and was filmed filming himself and the famous egg splatter. A great idea for the splat that was heard around the world. And the netizens stood up and took notice.

I have no idea what happened to Fraser Anning, but his viral idea gave other kids their own idea. Like Edmund Zhong, a 20-year-old Singaporean who, while merely reacting to a Facebook Post by Channel News Asia, wrote a simple wish: "I wanna do that to K. Shanmugan, I swear."

K. Shanmugan, for us who don't know, is Singapore's Law and Home Affairs Minister. So basically, Edmond's comment was an egg-threat to a Singapore government official. As could be expected from the stern government that he lived in, that comment spelled trouble for the boy!

The Singapore police immediately lodged a report, and the boy was made to explain his comment. Unfortunately for him, another man had responded to his comment with another comment, giving Edmond advance info about the next public appearance of the minister. Naturally, the police felt obliged to take the sequence of events seriously, as what they just did could, theoretically, fall within a Singapore crime called "incitement to violence". (Five year prison term!)

Of course Edmond is sticking to his view that it was an exercise of his freedom of speech. He was verbalizing what he thought inside, which was just to egg a politician. What's wrong with that?

Actual egg-throwing might lead, however, to more serious consequences. In Britain, the South China Morning Post reports that an egg-thrower was jailed for 28 whole days for egging Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbin. Ouch! That's extreme!

If Filipinos did that to their politicians, with no consequences for their action, we would have a sudden shortage of eggs. Protesters would hoard eggs, the more rotten the better. That would be a waste of perfectly good food. (I am predicting our activists would stockpile good eggs in advance and wait for them to go bad, just to elicit that wonderful sulphurous smell of egg mauvaise.)

Maybe an enterprising businessman can manufacture protest eggs, one that will burst confetti or glitter upon contact. Or perhaps even foam or perfumed mist. That would be much more palatable to the egg-donees, who can now avoid having to face not only their constituents in messy, possibly smelly, outfits, but also expensive cleaning bills for their ruined clothes.

Or perhaps, the egg could just explode into a neon slogan that would spell out political messages and hang twinkling in the air for about a few minutes. These might be better alternatives and protesters can avoid jail time.

Seriously though, I'm so disappointed with today's protesters. They used to be so inventive and radically exciting. Nowadays all I see are online ranters or EDSA marchers. The catalysts, the amount of infectious enthusiasm, the viral urges, those ingredients that can galvanize a nation into action isn't happening.

Doesn't matter that the politicians continue to pillage the coffers and dupe the countrymen while keeping them poor and underserved. No matter the indignities upon abuses upon betrayals, the protesters ain't swelling in numbers and ain't mobilizing.

Is it a case of the boiled frog just used to slowly worsening conditions? Or will something happen to make the frog leap out of its kettle? An egg-throw, perhaps?