KINIBIZ There are occasions where one needs humour, not just patience to deal with critics. The publication of the Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) 2014 Annual Report has unearthed its own set of denigrators.

Emerging out of the woodwork and safe behind their keyboards, they fire away on social media, hell bent on condemning every traction the government has achieved.

The irony is that when we first embarked on the National Transformation Programme in 2009, these same critics were vociferous in their accusations that we had neither the political will nor the capability to deploy reforms.

When we very quickly got down to implement three-foot activities to spearhead transformation, they claimed we did not have the results to show for our work.

Since 2011, we have annually published detailed reports on economic and government transformation. For further assurance, figures are externally validated by PricewaterhouseCoopers and international panels are invited to scrutinise and provide feedback.

Few other governments in the world have embarked on such an extensive way to share the nation’s scorecard. But somehow our critics have deemed these intentionally transparent steps to be insufficient.

Shifting gears, they went on to discredit and dampen goodwill by saying statistics from the Statistics Department, Finance Ministry, and Bank Negara Malaysia were lies, and damn lies.

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IDRIS JALA is CEO of Pemandu and Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department. Fair and reasonable comments are welcome at [email protected]