Transparency... a mere ornament!

Some people believe that transparency is limited to financial matters and bank accounts, and to knowing what one owns and what one owes. However, transparency is far broader than that.

We Arabs and Gulf residents all believe in covering up faults, as reflected in the common saying we use: “Cover what you encounter,” and “Covering up is a virtue,” and “Let things remain as they were in the late [deceased person’s] time.” This contradicts the transparency we advocate for and the disclosure of facts.

In Western and Eastern societies that do not believe in concealment, everything is brought to light. This is not done to profit from publishing scandals, but to learn from them.

In our societies, news such as the suicide of a young man or woman passes by as an ordinary report, but the audience does not know why the suicide occurred. Was it due to a personal problem, or circumstances surrounding them? Or when news breaks about a worker who died far from his family in Jakhoura, we do not know the circumstances of what happened. Or when a worker falls from a building under construction and dies.

Demanding to know the truth about what happened is not for the sake of defamation or revenge, but to understand the causes so that others facing similar circumstances can avoid them.

In the Netherlands, several years ago, a small bus took my family and me to another area. When we boarded, the driver asked us to fasten our seatbelts, which we did. However, as we started moving, I noticed that the driver had not fastened her seatbelt. This puzzled me, and I asked her why. She replied that there had been incidents where drivers were attacked by passengers sitting behind them, who would reach forward and strangle the driver. If the driver is wearing a seatbelt, they cannot escape. Therefore, these incidents were studied, and it was decided to allow drivers not to wear seatbelts to protect their lives.

In Washington, I stayed for a week and drove a small van, being careful while driving. One day, a car carrying three teenagers rolled over, and they died. They had just left school. This incident did not pass unnoticed; local media covered the event extensively, investigating how it happened, whether there was a vehicle malfunction or an issue with the road design at the curve they passed through. For a week, officials and the students’ families were consulted to determine the cause. I followed the developments closely, to the point that I avoided passing through the curve where the accident occurred.

During a trip to Finland, I observed buildings under construction and noticed that every floor had protective barriers to prevent workers from falling and losing their lives. We lack such protections, or perhaps we have not considered them.

Finally, we follow aviation incidents on television channels. When a plane crashes, it is not simply reported as “the plane crashed, and that’s it.” Instead, expert teams are tasked with studying what happened, even if the investigation takes months or years, to determine the causes. This allows for preventive measures in the future, whether in aircraft design, safety procedures, or pilot qualifications, thereby protecting other lives.

Here, we truly need transparency. When everything that happens passes by unnoticed, it is of no benefit.