The Blue Fairy in the fa­ble of Pinoc­chio stat­ed, “Lies can be eas­i­ly recog­nised. There are two kinds of them: those with short legs, and those with long noses.”

If it were on­ly so easy, some peo­ple would not be faced with the co­nun­drum they find them­selves in.

Guardian Me­dia’s ar­ti­cle of Ju­ly 8, ‘Who lied?’ raised this ques­tion when our PM made the star­tling an­nounce­ment of an at­tempt­ed coup by mem­bers of the SSA and the sub­se­quent de­nial by its for­mer di­rec­tor, Pas­tor Ma­jor Roger Best, who de­scribed this “witch-hunt” as “pre­pos­ter­ous” and “lu­di­crous” and “filled with many de­grees of dis­in­for­ma­tion to suit a par­tic­u­lar nar­ra­tive that was based on in­cor­rect in­for­ma­tion.”

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath com­ment­ed, “If you tell me some­body was plan­ning a coup to over­throw the Gov­ern­ment and no­body was charged, then some­thing is wrong if you have that in­for­ma­tion and you’re not us­ing it.” Ra­goonath be­lieved that Dr Row­ley was at­tempt­ing to put two dif­fer­ent is­sues to­geth­er: “One was on the SSA, and the oth­er was on Gary Grif­fith grant­i­ng Firearm User’s Li­cences. So whether the Prime Min­is­ter is try­ing to link there or not, I don’t know.”

He con­tin­ued, “But this last set of in­for­ma­tion about an at­tempt­ed coup was stretch­ing it a bit ... it re­mind­ed me of when Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was in pow­er and there was a sug­ges­tion about a coup at­tempt to over­throw the gov­ern­ment, and that’s why we had a State of Emer­gency. This time there is no State of Emer­gency, but we are hear­ing the same pro­pa­gan­da.”

A plot to stage a coup is a trea­so­nous act. Some hope it may just be sil­ly sea­son po­lit­i­cal rhetoric, while oth­ers say it could be an at­tempt to cre­ate a link to take down a cer­tain pub­lic fig­ure.

Some be­lieve that the weapon­i­sa­tion of the Sedi­tion Act was used against Sat Ma­haraj, Wat­son Duke, and Christo­pher Hugh­es. So who do we be­lieve—the politi­cian or the pas­tor?

Both pro­fes­sions are seen as mas­ters of de­cep­tion and ma­nip­u­la­tion, and psy­chol­o­gist Richard Christie ac­tu­al­ly stud­ied the thought process­es and ac­tions of politi­cians and re­li­gious lead­ers when he de­vel­oped his psy­cho­me­t­ric MACH-IV test. In 1979, psy­chol­o­gist BM De­Paulo pub­lished in the Jour­nal of Per­son­al­i­ty and So­cial Psy­chol­o­gy that the abil­i­ty of the av­er­age per­son to catch a liar is typ­i­cal­ly lit­tle more than a chance and rarely above 60 per cent. Psy­chol­o­gist Dr Paul Ek­man, au­thor of Telling Lies, pub­lished a study in 1991 that showed that even though Se­cret Ser­vice agents are bet­ter at de­tect­ing un­truths, they on­ly get it right two out of three times.

Ek­man de­vel­oped a tech­nique us­ing a high-speed cam­era to cap­ture some­one’s mi­croex­pres­sions, which hap­pen in a frac­tion of a sec­ond, and re­play them at much slow­er speeds to de­ci­pher lies. He has trained many in the field of in­ter­ro­gat­ing crim­i­nals and ter­ror­ists.

On June 21, the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions Bill was unan­i­mous­ly passed in our Low­er House, to use poly­graph tests for mem­bers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices, and cer­tain of­fices with­in the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice and the civ­il ser­vice. I be­lieve the his­to­ry of an in­di­vid­ual as well as Ek­man’s tech­niques should al­so be in­cor­po­rat­ed, due to con­cerns about the poly­graph’s ac­cu­ra­cy, in­ad­mis­si­bil­i­ty in courts, the fact that cer­tain per­son­al­i­ty types or the use of cer­tain med­ica­tion and biofeed­back tech­niques can ob­fus­cate the re­sults.

In 2003, the USA com­mit­tee of the Na­tion­al Re­search Coun­cil con­clud­ed that poly­graph ac­cu­ra­cy is 81 to 91 per cent, which is “well above chance, though well be­low per­fec­tion.”

Pres­i­dent of the PSWA, Act­ing ASP Gideon Dick­son, voiced his con­cerns with this bill. He ques­tioned the ac­cu­ra­cy of the “pseu­do­science” poly­graph test and called for oth­er pro­fes­sion­als, in­clud­ing politi­cians, mag­is­trates, and doc­tors, to be test­ed.

Let­ter writer Scar­let Benois-Sel­man al­so made a sim­i­lar call when she wrote, “This con­tro­ver­sy high­lights a sig­nif­i­cant is­sue: fair­ness. If poly­graph test­ing is deemed nec­es­sary for one group, then lead­ers should lead by ex­am­ple and un­der­go the same scruti­ny. The ho­n­our as­so­ci­at­ed with ti­tles like “ho­n­ourable” should not be tak­en light­ly. Those who hold such ti­tles should read­i­ly em­brace the op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­fend their in­tegri­ty and lead by ex­am­ple. Con­se­quent­ly, every mem­ber of the Gov­ern­ment should be re­quired to take poly­graph tests as a pre­req­ui­site for their po­si­tions, and al­so dur­ing of­fice.

“Lead­ing by ex­am­ple is cru­cial ... This would en­sure a uni­form stan­dard of in­tegri­ty across all branch­es of the Gov­ern­ment and the pub­lic ser­vice, fos­ter­ing greater pub­lic trust.”

Well, both Dick­son and Benois-Sel­man of­fer a so­lu­tion. The main play­ers can vol­un­tar­i­ly sub­mit to a poly­graph test. If not, like the Blue Fairy, we may have to keep look­ing at the noses and legs of those in­volved.