What the hell was Kishore saying?

Last Saturday, 13 Jun, Kishore was thinking aloud in an ST article titled, ‘Trust the people, share govt data’.  In the article he praised the highly educated population and our world best education system only to contradict himself by saying we have the most ill informed population. How so, highly educated but not well informed? Then he went on to put the blame on the civil servants for their reluctance to share information. And he went on and on to lambast them about lack of transparency and how good it would be if the people are well informed and can make wise decisions in difficult times.

Did you people find the above strange? What was Kishore saying, or who was he referring to? He praised Hsien Loong for his call for more transparency and for ‘the public sector to cooperate with the IPS (Institute of Policy Studies) and to be forthcoming with information and access’ to information.  Is an insider like Kishore that naïve? Actually no, he knew what he was saying and he knew who he was addressing, who was the culprit that was depriving the people of information and transparency, but he had to go round the mulberry bush to be politically correct.

You see, Kishore also said that he likes to analyse issues as honest as possible, without the bulls. And he quoted LKY, GKS and Raja as his mentors, the kind of men that would not tolerate bullshit like he did above.  The most important lesson he learnt from the holy trinity is ‘to be brutally honest in analyzing problems and situations. Both of them (LKY and GKS) would prefer to confront an uncomfortable truth rather than accept a comfortable lie.’

Who is the real culprit that was depriving the people from information and being not transparent? The civil service? Kishore must be joking or living with a comfortable lie.  He knew the problem but could not say it out aloud. So he conveniently quoted Ho Kwon Ping’s called for more transparency and sharing of information and his suggestion for a Code on Information Disclosure. Who should abide by this Code to disclose and share information to keep the people informed?

Then he let the cat out of be bag without naming the culprit that is behind the non disclosure of information and transparency issue. ‘The big question we have to ask is: Can we trust our own population to make wise judgments with the information given to them?’ Who is this ‘We’?

Kishore concluded by saying that there was a need to change this culture of not sharing information. And he said it was good that the Govt was forming a Strategic Policy Unit to identify national priorities and action plans. Here is Kishore’s beef. ‘Perhaps one additional task that could be assigned to the SPU would be to change the culture of sharing information. We can and should do so.’

Here he used the word ‘We’ again. Who is this mysterious ‘We’?  Who did not trust the people and did not want to share information?