The phrase “speak to truth to power” is used by those of us who think individuals and bodies who have a deep impact on our lives should be held accountable for their actions and decisions.
But what happens when those in power don’t care what we think, and don’t regard themselves as being accountable?
The Courier editor David Clegg’s excoriating piece on Monday on the lack of transparency in so many areas of public life, strikes at the heart of a growing chasm in our society.
A yawning gap exists between those who think politicians, civic leaders and others should be open to scrutiny and available for explanation when things go wrong and those who are in power and resistant to any challenge to the power they wield.
David Clegg’s words “There’s something corrosive at the heart of Dundee’s public life. The city’s key institutions are becoming more secretive, more defensive, and less willing to answer to the people they serve”, should be a dagger to the heart of those who’ve let down the public.
I fear however without addressing the matter of arrogant officialdom through stronger legal means, the rot is now so deep in our public institutions that many within them feel untouchable.
Too many apparatchiks are happy to sit out scandals and incompetence, and accept the odd casualty who then leaves with a handsome pay off to head into a comfortable retirement or after a decent interval when the scandal is forgotten, into another cosy sinecure elsewhere.
Increasingly and not just in Dundee, but throughout public life we’ve given power to a cohort of folk who feel they’re above the fray and that for anyone to question their actions and deeds is intolerable.
Stronger legal mechanisms are now needed to force those in positions of power in public life to accommodate reasonable requests for information.
And transparency has to be much more open; for instance senior council officials could be legally obliged to meet the media once a month in an open forum which could be live streamed for the general public.
Citizen journalists would also be entitled to attend.
‘Desire to hide unpalatable facts and actions goes deep’
That would allow robust questions which could be asked and answered without the usual obfuscation and PR spin.
The desire to hide unpalatable facts and actions from you and me goes deep in all such bodies.
As university Rector in 2019 at my first meeting at the university court, I asked whether then principal Professor Andrew Atherton, who was leaving of his own accord, was getting a golden handshake.
Atherton, on a salary of £298k, had quit after The Courier had revealed he’d been suspended in a row over unpaid rent on university accommodation; but my question, which the then Lord Provost Ian Borthwick also wanted answered, received no satisfactory response.
It was an early indication that the title Rector was just that; a titular nicety carrying no power, but it was also a sharp lesson in the way that those in positions of power hold themselves above questioning from the hoi polloi.
I recall 40 years ago as a law student visiting Polmont young offender’s institution as part of my studies.
We were blandly assured that everything was open and transparent and that no questions were off limits.
That was until we asked about the tragic suicides of some young inmates in the months previously, at which point the official guiding us, suddenly adopted a rigid Stalinist approach to all further inquiries.
Speaking truth to power is vital, but it’s also vital that power has to be compelled to hear it and act upon it.
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