“Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.”

- Franklin D Roosevelt

COMMENT | Communications and Multimedia Minister Saifuddin Abdullah's claim that the government does not manipulate or hide Covid-19 statistics is the kind of claptrap that makes this government even less credible than it already is.

What this government has done is make it impossible to accurately gauge the ravages of this pandemic.

Hospitals are reminding health care frontliners not to talk outside school, the state security apparatus is cracking down on health care workers for causing mischief, when all they are talking about is the dire situation they are in and of course politicians from the Perikatan Nasional (PN) regime are busy waging a very public war to retain power.

Nobody has any idea, for instance, what the criteria for states entering Phase 2 or 3 or whatever fancy term is used to demonstrate that a particular state’s Covid-19 figures are decreasing.

Or how states which do fulfil certain criteria but experience a resurgence will deal with such numbers, beyond the federal government coming up with on the fly strategies.

And forget about the ravages this pandemic has wrought on the economy. When a high ranking member of the PN government issues a public statement claiming that religion is placed over the economic interests...