What lies beneath

We’ve a general tendency for not believing our government. Whenever someone in authority shows up on T.V. to give a statement or something, we usually doubt everything he/she is saying and try to search for the truth between the lines; though he/ she might actually be honest. This attitude from us is most obvious in the times of disasters and crisis. When we hear, for example, that a plane crashed somewhere in the world and hundreds of people died, the government quickly declares, may be before any other country, that all the Egyptians who were on board of the plane are safe and sound. This turned into some kind of a public joke such that whenever an accident happens, we quickly say that for sure all the Egyptians are fine.

The whole world was suffering from the last economical crisis (recession) whereas the finance minister declared that our economy is doing just fine and was minimally affected! I’m not an expert in economy and I don’t claim to understand its theories well but if the speaker is a fool, the audience shouldn’t be.

To my good luck or bad luck, I can’t really tell, I work for the government in an important ministry. So, I’m sometimes aware of what is going on behind the scenes. That is why in a recent crisis that we faced when the ministry officials showed up on T.V. to assure the people that everything is fine and that the government has made the best it could, I wasn’t really assured because I knew that things weren’t that fine. Indeed great efforts were made but as usual the work wasn’t perfectly finished. It seems that the government is more concerned with the image that reaches the population than the actual work that affects them.

I became very depressed when I examined this situation because I measured on that all the other declarations I hear from different officials in the government and I completely lost trust, because I realized that things aren’t as good as they say, if not worse.

I believe that we’ve all the right not to trust our government because it rarely says the truth and has never been a “transparent” government. It’s better to tell your people that things are bad but every effort is made to make them better, than to tell them that everything is perfect while they can see in their daily life that they aren’t. I think that I’ll feel more secure if the government adopted this attitude.