If truth be told

Politicians of the world, rejoice for you can still tell lies during elections. The High Court of Britain has thrown out the case against prospective Prime Minister Boris Johnson. During a recent election he had made claims that withdrawing from the European Union would save £350m. The figure was challenged by his opposition at the time and subsequently in a legal action. The action was apparently ‘politically motivated and vexatious’, an unusual occurrence in any honest election.

The real concern is how honest are politicians, and especially prospective politicians, during elections. It’s not just a matter of kissing babies, shaking hands with people you will never speak to again or pledging monies to marginal electorates but to the themes they propose, better education, less poverty, freedom from drugs and in some countries just freedom itself. These are the things everybody wants and yet no one can seem to deliver them despite many honest attempts. Perhaps politicians should only promise what they can actually deliver.

A relatively recent change has been the rise of fake news and attacks on the freedom of the press. If the truth is not known as shown with the Chinese Government’s description of the Tiananmen Square’s massacre as ‘Justifiable’ then it disappears into the mists of times. There have been many attempts to remove or at least cleanse history with even some people claiming that horrors of the Holocaust did not occur. Fortunately there still are people who tell the true stories even if the cost is their own lives.

We all need to tell the truth but especially our leaders.

Dennis Fitzgerald
Australia