Can opposites ever find common ground?

Sandy Grant | Monday March 10, 2014 16:26

CAN OPPOSITES EVER FIND COMMON GROUND?

ight Thabo Masokola's article in last week's Guardian about the media's possible threat to national security generate further debate?

The central problem, however, rests with the central tenet of any national security system that to function effectively it must operate anonymously and enjoy absolute secrecy.

In any democratic state, however, it is likely that such convictions will continuously collide with strongly held counter beliefs that there must be accountability and transparency.

Opposing each other, therefore, and with seemingly no possibility of resolution is the State on the one hand, which is convinced that national security will be compromised by any degree of transparency and on the other, by the commercial press, not least, which may fear that without some degree of transparency there can be no knowing if national security is or is not being assured.

It will also fear, and be justified in fearing that abuse will occur when national security becomes the one and only element of government that is exempt from normal forms of public scrutiny and accountability.

Were the government to respond, it would probably say, 'trust us we know what we are doing'. But what ought to concern the government, however, is that such indicators as available suggest that the general public does not trust the security service, it fears it.

If this is indeed the case, there must be many who will wonder if widespread fear is an unavoidable result of securing national security, or if such an outcome was never anticipated or even sought by those who formulated the Intelligence and Security policy or approved the Bill in, was it 2007? My suggestion is that a part of the problem now being experienced can be traced back to the way that the government pushed the Bill through the National Assembly disregarding all the concerns about it which had been raised throughout the country.

Instead the Bill was rushed through the system and MPs in approving it, threw away the right of their constituents to know how their taxes would be spent and their own obligation to ensure that the government, without exception, is accountable to them individually and collectively to the National Assembly.

I remain convinced that by its precipitous handling of the new policy and Bill the government was in a large part responsible for the problems that are now being experienced. Some of those problems could have been avoided had the government accepted that national security can only have meaning to an electorate if this believes that it is its security which is being assured, and not the security of other unknowns.

It follows that this was the moment when the government could and should have taken steps to alert the country of its changed situation after such major changes in the region and of the previously unknown threats that confronted it.

But that of course brings us back to the nub of the problem and presents us with a stack of very difficult questions.

For instance, who is in a position to judge objectively if some element of national security has really been compromised, perhaps by the commercial press, or whether the issue involved has been exaggerated and is more related to personal embarrassment than to genuine national security concerns?

Something of the difficulty of deciding between one and the other can be understood from the nature and detail of the BDF's equipment which is secret to us here but is publicly available to everyone else in the world via Janes publications.

For me, the prospects of achieving better national security would be much enhanced were those committed to absolute secrecy and those committed to transparency able to find some common ground. The trick would be in identifying shared interests and concerns and in working around those. The likelihood of this happening now, however, seems sadly remote.

That national security, as a topic, needs debate does seem obvious but one element which mitigates against this happening can be seen in the article's title which for some, could be transposed and still make much sense. The central problem, however, rests with the central tenet of any national security system that to function effectively it must operate anonymously and enjoy absolute secrecy.

In any democratic state, however, it is likely that such convictions will continuously collide with strongly held counter beliefs that there must be accountability and transparency. Opposing each other, therefore, and with seemingly no possibility of resolution is the State on the one hand, which is convinced that national security will be compromised by any degree of transparency and on the other, by the commercial press, not least, which may fear that without some degree of transparency there can be no knowing if national security is or is not being assured. It will also fear, and be justified in fearing that abuse will occur when national security becomes the one and only element of government that is exempt from normal forms of public scrutiny and accountability. Were the government to respond, it would probably say, 'trust us we know what we are doing'. But what ought to concern the government, however, is that such indicators as available suggest that the general public does not trust the security service, it fears it. If this is indeed the case, there must be many who will wonder if widespread fear is an unavoidable result of securing national security, or if such an outcome was never anticipated or even sought by those who formulated the Intelligence and Security policy or approved the Bill in, was it 2007? My suggestion is that a part of the problem now being experienced can be traced back to the way that the government pushed the Bill through the National Assembly disregarding all the concerns about it which had been raised throughout the country.

Have we now forgotten that at the time Minister Skelemani promised meeting after meeting that the concerns that had been expressed would be considered and addressed before the Bill was passed into law. Instead the Bill was rushed through the system and MPs in approving it, threw away the right of their constituents to know how their taxes would be spent and their own obligation to ensure that the government, without exception, is accountable to them individually and collectively to the National Assembly. I remain convinced that by its precipitous handling of the new policy and Bill the government was in a large part responsible for the problems that are now being experienced. Some of those problems could have been avoided had the government accepted that national security can only have meaning to an electorate if this believes that it is its security which is being assured, and not the security of other unknowns. It follows that this was the moment when the government could and should have taken steps to alert the country of its changed situation after such major changes in the region and of the previously unknown threats that confronted it.

Ten years ago, let us say, there would have been very few who really grasped the nastier realities resulting from being a major diamond producing country, who fully understood the extent of the international drug trade as it affected this country, of money laundering, people trafficking and so on. Indeed how many understand these problems even today? Sadly, the answer would seem to be that dealing with such matters has to be the responsibility of a specialist few who should be left to do their job. But that of course brings us back to the nub of the problem and presents us with a stack of very difficult questions. For instance, who is in a position to judge objectively if some element of national security has really been compromised, perhaps by the commercial press, or whether the issue involved has been exaggerated and is more related to personal embarrassment than to genuine national security concerns? Something of the difficulty of deciding between one and the other can be understood from the nature and detail of the BDF's equipment which is secret to us here but is publicly available to everyone else in the world via Janes publications.