DO people have a right to know everything? Perhaps not. But they have the right to know everything about what happened in the Batang Kali landslide on Dec 16 last year that killed 31 people.
Yet almost six months after the country's second worst landslide tragedy, silence is as pregnant as if the nation is in full term. The unity government may not have won the seat in Putrajaya on a transparency ticket, but the term has been on ostentatious display since then.
We won't be terribly wrong in saying that silence is an antonym of transparency. Malaysian governments have an appalling record when it comes to being open about things that they should be open about. See-through governance is not sexy here. Here is why it should be.
One, it kills speculations. The world of speculation is a dangerous one to reside in. There, to turn Eliotesque for a moment, what is and what might have been remain a perpetual possibility. One such "speculation" was motivated by a VOA report on Jan 19 that quoted a senior government official as saying that a farm and campsite where the tragedy occurred were in an area that was not zoned for agricultural, commercial or recreational use. "No-go zone" was the phrase.
To back its claim of accuracy — a critical factor in genuine newsmaking — the VOA website quotes the Natural Resources, Environment and Climate Change Ministry as saying in a written statement that "the development of Father's Organic Farm was in violation of the conditions of approval of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report to Malaysia Botanical Gardens Resort Sdn Bhd".
If so, why wasn't the farm and campsite put a stop to at the early stage of the EIA? Should we be surprised? No. Many businesses in Malaysia pay no heed to the EIA, because they know they can get away with it.
This leads to accountability, the second argument for see-through governance. If VOA is accurate, then why has no one been held accountable, including those in authority who looked the other way? The loved ones of the 31 killed and the 61 survivors of the tragedy have the right to seek accountability.
So have the people who were fortunate enough to not have been there. Making people accountable ensures that such tragedies will not happen again. Finally, the third argument for see-through governance is that it curtails corruption, a notoriety Malaysians are only too familiar with. A 2016 Time magazine issue placed Malaysia at close to the very top of the dishonourably corrupt in the world. Second only to Brazil.
Malaysia may not be the second most corrupt nation in the world now, but we are among the global champions of the corrupt. The reasons for this are clear. One, tragedies keep happening and yet there is no public disclosure of the causes.
The public is perpetually kept blind, deaf and dumb, a trait we learnt from our British colonial masters; Official Secrets Act and some such similar nonsense, though there may be some sense when it comes to national security.
Two, no one is held accountable. From errant public officers to developers, people have been getting away with bloody murder, literally. The federal and state governments can put an end to this by making see-through governance the ruling mode.