求拍~ issue 8

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"It is often necessary, even desirable, for political leaders to withhold information from the public."





Calling for the publicity of more and more information from the government and politicians are expressed on the mass media almost every day, which leads us to think about whether the political leaders should be frank about everything. Admittedly, honesty and frankness help to keep an image of probity and faith since they are considered good virtues in every culture. However, in my point of view, it is naive for political leaders to disclose anything to the public in terms of the interests of themselves as well as the benefits of the whole society.

On the individual level, it is required for political leaders to holding back some truth from his people in order to maintain a high approval rate and to strengthen the leadership of himself and the party he stands for. Although we are used to describe politics as games, politics are more complex than any kind of games in that politicians try to achieve success by all means, including the tricks that might shock the whole society and destroy their official career. History is laden with examples where the exposure of truth abased politicians' public image to the bottom. What came into mind first is the world-shaking "Watergate" scandal, which compelled Nixon to resign from office. And in today's political arena, the Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi is now facing considerable pressure from the public after the disclosure of the "naked-pic -gate" and his collaboration with the Mafia to win the election campaign several years ago.

On the social level, for the politicians, some information demands confidentiality to insure social stability. For instance, under the risks of rampant terrorist attacks in today's world, the actual location of military bases, the military strategies to thwart terrorism and the top martial technology, which determines the security of the nation and public safety, need to be kept secret. Besides, withholding some information on emergencies sometimes assists the society to function normally and go through the difficulties sooner instead of public panic. Considering a warning of bomb in an office building, there seems no need to inform the public if the government has have enough time to take proper action and eliminated the bomb to keep people safe in time. Otherwise, mass hysteria may occur where people stop working and try to jump down from high floors to escape, leading to meaningless death accompanying enormous economical loss.To make things even worse, the government have to keep order meanwhile dealing with the bomb, which will undoubtedly slow down the removal of the bomb and the revival of the normal situation.


Apart from the consideration of stability, high working efficiency necessities withholding some details of political proceedings. Undoubtedly, the publicity of politicians' ideas and concerns let people know what is going on about the issues that related with them, thus establishing their trust toward the government and in return forcing the politicians to think more about the interests of the public. In spite of the concessions above, many issues, such as the tax-rate problem, are so controversial that each decision made by the government will arouse fierce debates among every walk of life once open to the public, as a result of which an agreement takes considerable time to achieve. Thereby, it is sometimes rational for politicians to conceal some proceeding details and to make a decision that benefit the majority of people as long as it is within the endurance of modern democracy.


To sum up, when considering more comprehensively, it is sometimes desirable for politicians to keep some information from the public because such behaviour is a necessary means to the final objective of effective leadership.