When secrets abound and trust is scarce

Our public officials must stop assuming that we're stupid.

COMMENT

One wonders whether Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi knew what he was talking about when he warned the opposition against politicising the move to amend the Official Secrets Act (OSA). We have to assume that he was underestimating the public’s intelligence, like most officials in the government and Umno often do.

Surely, any average member of the reading public knows – or at least suspects – that there is a political motive behind the move to make punishments under the OSA more severe. Indeed, nothing that the Najib administration does these days is seen as free of any political intention.

To make it worse, Zahid addressed his warning to opposition politicians, whose job, in this case, is to ensure that the OSA is not used as a means for the government to keep dirty secrets. In the process, they’ll often have to use political arguments. Whether or not they’ll play dirty is another matter altogether. If they do, the same members of the public who are intelligent enough to see through BN’s dirt will see through theirs.

No one is denying that it is sometimes legitimate for a government to keep certain secrets from the public. But in a democracy, protection should be severely limited to information that, if leaked, would threaten national security.

Neither would anyone disagree with Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Azalina Othman’s contention that there’s no such thing as absolute freedom. There should be laws against the abuse of freedom to spread hatred, especially in a multicultural country like Malaysia. But just as the ordinary citizens shouldn’t be abusing their rights, the people determining limits on freedom shouldn’t be abusing their power either.

One cannot help linking the move to impose severe punishments under the OSA to the exposes on 1MDB. But how has the information leaked so far threatened national security? Isn’t the fact that the government has withheld information on the use of state funds a violation of national security in itself?

When public officials serve themselves before the people, isn’t that a breach of trust too? And if the people in power cannot make a distinction between matters of national security and criminal wrongdoing, can they really be trusted with a stronger OSA?

Of course, the people can give the government the benefit of the doubt. But is it wise to believe that everything is properly managed when we have an administration that gets up in arms whenever information is leaked instead of offering explanations that would expose the leaked information as lies? In some cases, like the 1MDB investigations, the government has merely dished out excuses and closed-door verdicts instead of explanations.

Undeniably, the debate about the OSA and whistleblowing is tied to questions about the responsible use of information. But at the heart of the matter is a growing distance between the people and the government, a void of trust that cannot be bridged by more excuses. In the end, trust cannot be given; it must be earned. And if the government wants the rakyat to back its policies, whether it’s the OSA or TPPA, it must first prove that it is the people-centred and responsible government it claims to be.