The spiral of silence

WHEN SILENCE ISN’T GOLDEN! is not just a cute aphorism but is equally a poignant imagery that puts the sonoric into a metaphoric dialogue with the perceptual as if these senses share a unity to which our linguistic habits of thought seem too eager to compartmentalise and segregate. The imagery also invoke its own inversion: if silence could also be golden, one wonders what riches (and problems) will accompany its presence? The phrase silence is not golden comes from a recent editorial viewpoint expressed in the Solomon Star in which the anonymous author casts a methodic doubt over the ”way of silence”. Here the methodical “way of silence” refers not to anything like a shamanic scheme of cognitive insight or a philosophical view of contemplative wisdom but to the field of moral visibility and public accountability.

While bearing in mind the power and eloquence of silence, the Solomon Islander who pens that editorial article argues that at times, keeping silent offers the best possible exit route out of a situation of conflict and doubt but at other times “silence is not the way to go”. If the political theory concerning the spiral of silence means that one’s perception of the distribution of public opinion motivates people to express their political opinions, then the author of that letter was doing just that by questioning why the Solomon Islands government was committing itself to a coveted policy of silence over several pressing issues. Firstly, it appears that the city of Honiara has been subjected to bouts of power cuts in recent weeks but the city residents have got no explanation from the government about this situation. The only explanation the residents of Honiara got was defeaning silence.

In retrospect, the author detects a pattern in successive governments in Solomon Islands to maintain a particular attitude of silence over matters of public importance and fears that the “silences are growing in strength“. The examples cited include the commission of inquiry into the 1991 plane crash in Marau (in eastern Guadacanal) where 15 people died and the recent inquiry into the China town riot of April 2006. Referring to the recent inquiry, the author asks: “Why has the government gone so silent about the findings of the Report and is not sharing its findings with the public?”

This Solomon Isander is not alone in expressing concerns like this about how endless amounts of public money have been used in commissions of inquiries with no conclusive statements or decisive actions taken to address the motivations behind the commission of inquiries in the first place. Instead what people get back is a response characterised by indifference and silence on the part of governments. This is certainly true in Papua New Guinea where numerous inquiries have not seen the light of day. The present Somare government of PNG for instance has been very silent over a number of issues including the clandestine operation that saw Julian Moti being spirited into Solomon Islands in the cover of the night in a decommissioned PNG military airplane. Other issues include the Ekonet deal, the off-shore account in Singapore involving monies earned as royalties from logging exports, the dollar-diplomacy saga involving Taiwan, the purchase of Tolukuma gold mine and the “unconstitutional” basis of the recent gas deal. These are but a sample of scandals that have made controversy synonymous with endemic silence.

All of these cases go to highlight that a pervasive culture of silence has come to characterise the nature of Melanesian state governments to respond to the  legitimate demands of accountability and trusteeship that its citizens rightly deserve to have. Instead the deepening spiral of silence is likely to insert a wedge between the people and the governments with the result that issues of trust and accountability will turn into an administrative project of managing suspicion and mistrust and ultimately governance will become a nightmare of jeopardies. Unless the statecraft is based intrinsically and inevitably on an opposition between the state and its citizens, the admonition behind the imagery of silence is not golden speaks to a problem of disunity between the State and its subjects.