This past Tuesday, “Occupy Parliament: an uprising against collective greed Kenyan members of parliament” took place.

The public demonstration was against the attempt by MPs to reverse the decision of the Salaries and Remuneration Commission which brought their basic pay down to Ksh532,500 ($6,400) from the Ksh851,000 ($10,200) that members of the previous parliament had earned.

The SRC’s decision was known prior to the elections — meaning that when candidates ran for office, they were aware what their remuneration would be. The SRC’s decision is also supported by the general public.

According to Ipsos Synovate, no less than 86 per cent of Kenyans polled this past week support the SRC’s decision. Which didn’t, however, stop the MPs from calling for the SRC’s disbandment.

Thus Kenyans took to the streets. The demonstrators marched from Freedom Corner to parliament without incident. They then, in a move to symbolise the greed of the “MPigs” released pigs around parliament and drenched them with blood.

The General Service Unit and the anti-riot police moved in. Teargas and water cannons were unleashed. Several protestors, including women, were beaten in full view of television cameras. Some protestors were arrested, charged the following day with animal-rights violations as well as affronting the Muslim community.

It is — or should be—a simple story. MPs behaved badly. Kenyans mounted a public demonstration. As is their right. But it is, of course, not a simple story.

This may be the first public demonstration following the controversial elections — during which public demonstrations were unconstitutionally and illegally suspended by the security services to maintain the “peace.” This “peace” narrative holds, as some reactions to the public demonstration show.

Commentators have been quick to ask why the protestors didn’t use “legal” avenues instead. First, another group of Kenyans is trying to use the “legal” avenue. Second, KPTJ is, following the Supreme Court decision on the presidential petitions, more than a little sceptical about the legal avenue. Third, public protest is a legal avenue.

Which isn’t to imply there isn’t a debate amongst the protestors as to what worked and what didn’t. For example, about the use of the pigs — which many felt was effective and inspired but which many didn’t (some Muslims were offended and the use of real blood was, no doubt, over the top).

The thing to note just how much, in the public mind, public protest — rallies, demonstrations, sit-ins — are now effectively associated with a threat to “peace.” The question is why.

Any public protest, however carefully planned, is inevitably infiltrated by both intelligence and plainclothes personnel who play the role of saboteurs to create chaos, thus providing the excuse for an unnecessarily violent break-up and eroding public sympathy for the protestors.

Or deliberately allow paid saboteurs to do the same (think back to the whips of Jeshi la Mzee in the 1990s and do not imagine that that tired tactic has run its course).

But today, in 2013, the main reason we’re so precious about the “peace” is obviously the insidious narrative that prevailed during the general election.

But the violence of 2007/8 did not occur because people publicly protested. It occurred because public protest was denied. It occurred because people organised it. It occurred because the security services participated in it — including through gang-raping women and shooting Kenyans in the back.

Public protest, in and of itself, is not a threat to the peace. It is our right.

L. Muthoni Wanyeki is doing her graduate studies at L’Institut d’etudes politiques (Sciences Po) in Paris, France