That did not deter the government from carrying on the ridiculous charade that all was well with official denials at the highest echelons of government to the chagrin of both the international and local observers . They had taken a stand and they were going to stick to it .
The pertaining situation raises several fundamental questions about the social contract that the electorate signs with elected leaders at the polls , among the most important being the right to the truth and the principle of transparency .
If the government is willing to go to such absurd lengths to deceive the public about the health of their elected and supposedly beloved leader then one is justified to assume that there is a great deal of chicanery that goes on in the name of governing .
It does not take a lot of imagination to surmise that this same cabal of politicians and government operators , capable of deceiving the public about such a publicinterest issue is equally capable of rigging elections and hoodwinking the public .
We do appreciate that the leader ’ s stand on the Corona Pandemic created a potentially embarrassing situation on the international arena and eating humble pie especially after demise would demean the stature of the leader in the eyes on the international community .
They have gone through an impressive show of national grief and the leader has been buried with top national honors but the cause of his death is still a speculation and we are now certain that it shall never be disclosed by those who sought to conceal it in the first place .
If a person offers information that they don ’ t know for certain that it is true then that person is engaged in disinformation even if it turns out that the information is true . The test is the person ’ s intention at the point of dissemination .
If the government deliberately chose to continue with a narrative that pretends there is no problem then they will have done the country a massive disservice because it is not written in any democratic tome or leadership manual that to err is not politics .
It would be a crime against humanity if the country chose to keep up a façade of wellbeing for political expediency when a disease was ravaging the country . The crackdown on the media is a sure sign that all is not well in that country .
The world has operated on the premise that information is power but it is only power as long as it is handled responsibly and not as a tool of keeping people in the dark for the sole purpose of manipulating and to control them .
Our founding father is credited with the quote that ‘ Serikali ’ actually means ‘ Siri Kali ’ as his way to explain the government ’ s penchant to have official secrets in the name of public safety . And thus the Secret Operations and Secret Documents that have term periods before being released to the public .
Every time that such classified information has been made public it has been the trend that the information was classified to commit an official crime that would not have been tenable in a court of law had the matter been in the public domain .
Misinformation is an unfortunate consequence of human beings interacting and although it cannot be eradicated it can be reduced significantly by due diligence and the vetting of information before it is disseminated . Disinformation on the other hand is deliberate and a criminal act .
We barely tolerate the withholding of information but certainly not disinformation . When an individual decides that certain truths are too explosive for others to digest then he is assigning to himself a role of superiority that equates him to God . Oppression swiftly follows , on this we can attest .
We must stay vigilant and resist any attempt to muzzle information and remember that power corrupts and one of the most effective ways to wield power is to control information flow to the citizenry and here the fourth estate must play its role with uncompromised integrity .