Recently, the honourable prime minister went on record to say that the reduction of the fuel subsidy will be chanelled to development projects to benefit the rakyat. Yeah, right. In the current climate where actual and concrete information is hard to come by and often cannot be verified, the PM's statement can only be met with a bucket of salt.

Perhaps the government of the day should recall what then US president James Madison uttered in 1822: 'A popular government, without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives'.

Unfortunately, our government - despite its new mantra of openness and accountability - is still very wary of making disclosure of information ranging from tender processes for public projects to the breakdown of expenses for past mega projects.

Until and unless the government realises that the people are entitle to this information to evaluate whether the government has been keeping its part of the bargain, it will continue to pay only lip service to the rakyat.

To this end, the time is high for the government to seriously introduce a Freedom of Information Act modelled along the existing laws in Canada, Ireland, the UK, Australia and the US. We do not need to send a delegation to "melawat sambil belajar" as the framework of these Acts are readily available on the Net.

The federal government has many a time said that foreign investors are the key to economic development in the country. Perhaps a country that respects and values its rakyat's maturity will do the right thing which will in turn spur more investment for the country.