LEARN from our history lessons or be condemned to repeat the same mistakes, so goes the saying widely attributed to philosopher George Santayana.
In our case, where official secrets — once so classified — can stay that way for a seeming eternity, history may well be forgotten in the process. That, of course, will be a tragedy.
To overcome any such collective loss of memory over historical events, and especially inconvenient ones, the government has announced moves to establish a general policy for the declassification of historical documents currently out of reach even to historians, as they come under the Official Secrets Act (OSA).
For too long, access to parts of Malaysia's history has been restricted, limiting the ability of historians, researchers and the public to examine important events and more fully understand how decisions that shaped the country were made.
