Latest update May 25th, 2026 12:35 AM
Deceit for democracy
“Transparency” is the mantra of our democratic age; an age in which one would be hard-pressed to find a citizen that would deny the right to “know what’s going on” in any organisation or institution of which he/she is a member.
And this would cover the gamut from the lowly village office, the cricket club, the business corporation all the way up to the government and state itself.
We want to know because of not only our own experience but the experience in every other jurisdiction has taught us that once power is conferred on individuals they will tend to abuse it.
They can only do so, however, if they violate the democratic rules of their own institutions, which were invariably enacted to prevent that very eventuality.
So we have the spectacle of a few shareholders of less than a handful or corporations turning up at annual meetings to question the boards of directors that are supposed to look after their interest.
The responses are invariably more than smoke of various opacities blown into the shareholders’ eyes. Boards and Executives, drawn from the same incestuous pool, end up covering for each other. And the question has to be asked, “What is going on in behind the walls of all those companies that have less inquisitive shareholders?”
The supposedly non-profit organisations are in no way any better. Have we forgotten the revelations of mendacity and corruption in the Guyana Cricket Board that oozed out in the wake of an acid attack on one of its executives?
The GCB has clear rules that are supposed to ensure fiscal and other probities. And we can even go on to check on the workings of our religious institutions that are supposed to be the very epitome of integrity and trust. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will guard the guardians?
And of course we end up (or down) with our government. The largest institution of them all, with the most power and concomitantly the most entrenched body of rules to enforce its transparency – the Constitution – backed up by centuries of case law.
Yet we are in the greatest fog as to what actually goes on behind the many closed doors of officialdom – all appointed by ourselves, mind you. Some have been clamouring for a “Freedom of Information Act” (FOIA) to augment the need for greater transparency: it is a concession that the Constitution and all the old case law have failed – or perchance have not been exhausted.
But a FOIA, while a step forward, is not going to guarantee the need for greater transparency. It is not for lassitude that even though the government has promised to introduce a FOIA, the latter has not yet been manifested.
There are, as we have pointed out before, many ways to skin a cat. We can be assured that, as in the countries that have gone down that path, there will be so many “national security” exceptions built into the act that the man in the street will still be in the dark on burning issues.
So what is left? There’s ourselves, we say. It is our contention that democracy, with its necessity of transparency, will be well served if the ordinary citizen understands and accepts that a dab of deceit is vital for its survival in the face of the obdurate stonewalling by those in office.
The ordinary drone – meaning most of us ordinary folks – in the institutions that we have created are very familiar with the rules that are being violated. They have to have the courage to reveal to the media the nature of those transgressions. The power betrayers may see it as an act of betrayal, but it actually is an act of affirmation of our right to know.
From the very origins of the press it flourished because of “leaks” from citizens. The judiciary in the developed democracies now routinely accept a “public interest defence” for information that is reasonably linked to public affairs. Long live deceit for democracy.
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