I just read Bernard Leong’s opinion on the civil service in the light of some recent events. I thought that it was a pretty fair and well written piece that reminded me of one of my favorite quotes on governance by John F. Kennedy:

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

Sometimes, I wish that Singapore’s government can do what John F. Kennedy said. While there are many Internet sites trying to incite some form of displeasure or even hatred towards the government, I believe the majority of Singaporeans are not as such. If we look at statistics, a sufficiently large sample almost always follow a normal distribution, so the number of government haters are actually pretty small, despite them being pretty vocal (at least on the Internet). Most people are actually rational fence-sitters who neither love or hate the government.

However, by being afraid to tell the truth (however ugly the truth is), the fence-sitters are going to be pushed towards the end of the spectrum that the government obviously doesn’t like. I can accept that the government too makes mistakes at times. No human being is immune to error. When I think the government has made a mistake that affects Singaporeans, it is only natural that I get upset. After all, we pay the world’s highest salaries to ministers and top civil servants. Of course, I would be somewhat upset that the people who are supposedly worthy of such salaries make mistakes. On a scale of one to ten with one being least angry and ten being most angry, I would rate myself a three if I think that the government has made a bad mistake.

If the government chooses not to be upfront with the facts surrounding the mistake, the scale changes drastically. I would say it can go up to a perfect ten. The reason is simple. If the government chooses not to be upfront, the only logical conclusion I can draw is that someone somewhere is trying to hide something. That is way more unacceptable than making a mistake.

Usually, the anger from being kept in the dark far surpasses the deed itself. The Republicans know this very well by now. US officials knew there was no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but chose to hide the fact. The resulting public anger clearly contributed to the loss of the House and the Senate to the Democrats in the recent congressional elections. The US experience with Iraq is a clear signal that people don’t mind mistakes half as much as they mind cover-ups. And, it isn’t wise to shoot oneself in the foot just to deliberately keep the golden mouth shut. Ask Bush.