Information is power. When government officials share information with their subjects – the people they represent and have placed them in their positions of power – they rely on it to be true. The people’s way of life and their decisions are made founded on the facts that have been shared with them.

Whether driven to it because of an avoidance of having a political fight, or because of intentional mischief making, if they don’t tell exactly the truth it is another form of betrayal. Hiding facts that you know your countrymen want and should know is withholding the truth. If it’s not lying, it certainly isn’t moral.

Politicians have learnt the art of not answering a question with some gobbledygook eg. ‘privacy’, protecting other parties, could affect security, etc. as a matter of principle, even when you could happily tell the truth. In other words, don’t answer “no” to any question that you wouldn’t also have been willing to answer “yes” to. That way, others can’t employ those magical information-producing inferences when you try to withhold information from them. If you spurn intrusive questions even when you don’t need to, others can no longer infer such a need from the mere fact of your silence. Conversely: an unprincipled privacy is no privacy at all, since your ad hoc silences will be revealing.

Government officials can always make the case for not telling exactly the truth as being justified, as is the case of withholding information. And they generally do. The trouble is someone who would prefer to avoid not telling exactly the truth is clearly less bad than someone with no compunction, but when it comes to government officials they all seem to suffer from the power disease – they have no compunction.

Our main overseas story involves Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, and the catastrophic security failure in Benghazi, and the great cover up that involved not telling exactly the truth and withholding information. It got found out (by CNN) and then an attack was made on the news agency by the government that was responsible.

Does all this seem familiar? Can you see how our very own Premier, Hon. McKeeva Bush, has learnt the art? That is why he is shoulders above any other politician here or ever has been in this country. Unfortunately, I am not being complimentary.

I am referring to yesterday’s story in iNews Cayman where we published the Statement released by the Premier’s Office where he said he has not committed to making the entire Framework for Fiscal Responsibility he signed with the UK last year into law. He contradicted comments from the Governor’s Office.

“The statement from the Office of the Governor regarding assurances given by Premier McKeeva Bush to Minister Mark Simmonds during a 20 September courtesy call that the Framework for Fiscal Responsibility will be transposed into law ‘no later than 9 November 2012’ has omitted important information that creates a misleading picture of what was discussed,” the Premier’s Office statement said. “However, Premier Bush also stressed that it was necessary, and important, for the government to consult with the private sector on the FFR prior to the bill going to the House. At no point did the premier indicate that the entire FFR as was signed in 2011 would be enacted in law.”

Who is misleading whom? Who is not telling exactly the truth?

Are these all examples of the ‘POWER DISEASE’?