Transparency: How much
of it do we really want and need?
Liberation, France
Battling
Transparency is the Preserve of the 'Elite'
"Wherever
transparency reduces the rights of the individual, it must be fought. … But if
it's a question of shedding light on the actions of governments, who can
protest? We are not witnessing the emergence of a new totalitarianism, which is
a bogeyman designed to protect the powerful, but the spread of democracy, which
obliges officials to listen to their constituents and account for their
activities."
The
word of the year? Transparency, it would appear. It's an old idea, one can say.
But it has accrued new capital in 2010. Witness: WikiLeaks creates a scandal by
casting light on a myriad of official and confidential documents; the
government promises complete transparency in the Mediator affair
[Mediator is a heart drug now known to have killed thousands]; secret recording
of private conversations in the Bettencourt family [founders of L'Oreal] is
suddenly brought to light and creates a national scandal; Dominique
Strauss-Kahn and Martine
Aubry agree on a Socialist Party candidacy, which is then denounced as a secretive
arrangement that makes a mockery of the "resolutely transparent"
Socialist primary process; mayors of major cities deploy an arsenal of
surveillance cameras to combat delinquency; the children of victims of the bombing
in Karachi call for transparency in regard to previously secret arms contracts.
One demands transparency - and often obtains it - in regard to the benefits of lawmakers,
bank bonuses, CEO salaries, concerts of Johnny Hallyday, the methods
of war in Afghanistan, the ill-gotten gains of African heads of state, consecutive
expropriations after flooding
in Charente, mathematical models used by climatologists, the digital practices
of Google Earth and the cost of transporting the president of the Republic.
Transparency?
This is the law and the prophets! Immediately, those who adhere to a certain
politico-philosophic conformity have become alarmed. Into Flaubert's Dictionary of
Received Ideas, one might add a new entry. Transparency: to thunder
against, to denounce as "dictatorship." The transparent society would
be the antechamber of a new totalitarianism, where everyone would be constantly
watched and controlled. Orwell
is invoked, soon followed with Discipline and Punishby Michel Foucault. In this narrative, there is, we have to say quite
transparently, a great darkness.
This
discourse on transparency mostly creates confusion. Because after all, should
we really be concerned that citizens of democracies require greater government
openness? Such decisions require transparency from those concerned, and for
which in case of error, they should pay the highest price. Wherever
transparency reduces the rights of the individual, it must be fought. Surveillance
cameras, digital files and Internet profiles compiled by private or public
companies must be subjected to legal oversight, their methods regulated, their
application circumscribed or prohibited.
Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US
But
if it's a question of shedding light on the actions of governments, who can
protest? We are not witnessing the emergence of a new totalitarianism, which is
a bogeyman designed to protect the powerful, but the spread of democracy, which
obliges officials to listen to their constituents and account for their
activities. An imperious and opaque republic is giving way to a democracy for
all. The spotlight of opinion is trained especially on corruption and arbitrariness
and excesses of power. And we should be alarmed: the denunciation of
transparency - the pons
asinorum [bridge of asses] of conservatism - leads ultimately to a form
of political obscurantism. Can one genuinely ask for opacity when one seeks to
be enlightened?
[Editor's
Note: Originally the name of a geometric theorem, the term pons asinorum is used
as a metaphor for a problem or challenge that will separate the sure of mind
from the simple and the fleet thinker from the slow; to represent a critical
test of ability or understanding. The author is denouncing what he perceives as
a conservative tendency against transparency.]
*Laurent Joffrin is the
managing editor of Liberation
