Controversial comments taken out of context

Politicians and Public Figures can speak their mind in public or private conversations. Discuss.

I believe that politicians and public figures should not speak their mind in public conversations. The politicians and public figures are important people in the society, what they do will be reflected upon Singapore and Singaporeans do look up to them as well. The bad publicity that we will get from this incident might cause distrust from other countries. I don’t think that speaking their minds is a bad thing to do but I do believe that they should be mindful of what they say as their words carry a lot of weight. Devastating wars can be ignited from a simple exchange of words. People tend to get defensive when facing criticism and the human ego plays a huge part in it.

Foreign Minister George Yeo slammed the released of the comments which he described as “gossip” and “cocktail talk” that should have remained confidential. However in my opinion, he should not be talking about such things with other people in the first place. The comments were highly disrepectful to the other nations and this will definitely cause friction between the countries. For example calling Malaysia a confused and dangerous state due to incompetent politicians, Singapore and Malaysia already has strained relations over the sale of water supply with this attack launched towards them, Malaysia could feel unjustified.

I also feel that Wikileaks is not fair to the policitians and public figures involved as they might have taken the words out of context, making a mountain out of a molehill. We should give the policitians the benefit of the doubt as we do not know how true the source is and the fact that they did not know that someone heard their conversations. I feel that Wikileaks should not be published in the first place as some of the documents are highly confidential and private. We are all human beings and everyone tends to gossip a little so what's wrong with speaking their mind in private conversations? However, Wikileaks do give the people transparency in all the governments decisions so they have a plus side too. They show us the things that the government might try to hide from us and if the nations have nothing to hide, they should not be afraid of Wikileaks at all.