I am excited about the prospect extended by new Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi that he only wants the truth to be told to him. Unfortunately malaysiakini's headline on this subject, 'Pak Lah wants all BN leaders to tell him the 'truth'', appears to also enter a cavaet as to who might be entitled to tell the truth. Just BN leaders! Obviously, that also means the truth as only they see it.

This need for the truth would have been a lot more impactful and welcomed if Badawi could also invite all and sundry to tell him the truth. So long as Irene Fernandez's guilty finding for telling the truth as she saw it remains outstanding, Pak Lah's call might get diminished in its value.

May I therefore request that Pak Lah clearly stipulates who, when and how truth can be told to him. Precedents set by his predecessor obviously continues to constrain truth from coming out. Some obvious examples are:

Irene Fernandez: Had she been a BN leader would her "truth" not subjected her to the agony she now faces?

Irene Fernandez: Had she been a BN leader, rather than exposing the "truth" through a press conference and distributing copies of her report or charges, would she have been better off whispering the truth to you quietly?

This is something the BN leaders who have now been asked to tell you the truth would be eager to know. How to convey the "truth" to you?

Who decides on relevance? It may be the truth, yet we all know that just one person can decide that that truth is irrelevant to the issue being addressed, even though the rest of the world might think otherwise.

We have obviously made a class act of making relevant the irrelevant without necessarily having to provide a basis for taking such a stand.

I reckon we should all not get too excited just yet about this freedom to express the truth until some of these are addressed. Pak Lah, I am not a BN leader nor am I a member of any political party, but I know that I too am capable of telling the truth sometimes. Can I tell you these truths?