Most citizens would be disinclined to question the veracity of the brief, unambiguous statement of only 156 words that had been signed or endorsed by the President of their country; a former President; the Speaker of the National Assembly; six serving Cabinet Ministers; five Members of Parliament and 16 other members of the ruling party's Central Committee. To do so would be to question the character of members of the most important legislative and executive branches of the state - the National Assembly and the Cabinet.

The statement issued earlier this month by the PPP Central Committee concerned certain words which were reported to have been uttered at a meeting held at the Party's Freedom House headquarters on January 31. The official statement was very exact and contradicted the account of two other members of that Committee, one of whom has since been expelled.

It is not easy for persons who were not present at the meeting to judge between the two accounts. Most outsiders, however, regard truthfulness as excluding the possibility that its denial could also be true. In other words, in this case, if one account is true, the other is false; both cannot be true.

Many wonder why it was necessary to conduct such a tour de force to validate or contradict what could have been careless comments or tactless whispers which were not grave enough to endanger the national interest. The answer may be found in neither the veracity nor falsity of the actual words spoken at the meeting but in the way the Party thinks, speaks and acts.

Writing of the fictional totalitarian society of Oceania, George Orwell explored the 'Principles of Newspeak', the state's official language: "Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods."

In Orwellian newspeak, goodthink came to mean 'orthodoxy' and, along with it, the mental capacity to reject contrary opinions or beliefs especially as the result of political indoctrination. Later on, modern theoreticians developed the concept of groupthink to refer to the practice of thinking or making decisions 'as a group.'

By confining discussion and expression to the group, especially a highly coherent one such as the Central Committee, the quest for consensus is heightened and dissent is discouraged, giving rise to groupthink. After several years together, members start agreeing with each other and with everything out of custom.

The group comes to believe in its own morality, if not invulnerability. Agreement fosters the illusion of unanimity. Coercion is not needed to guarantee agreement as members tend to submerge their individual identities in the committee and share its objectives voluntarily. In such an environment, it is easy to deem the group's decisions as 'good' and to discard contradictory opinions as 'bad.'

When only goodthink ideas and groupthink decisions are allowed to reach the public through the state media - newspaper, radio and television - the implications are frightening. 'Reliable' persons could be invited to give speeches or express their opinions on various viewpoints, interviews, newspaper columns or TV talkshows, equipped with an unambiguous vocabulary to repeat goodthink information automatically.

Not surprisingly, in the weeks following the issuance of the Central Committee's statement and the expulsion of one of its members, there were several predictable reports of widespread agreement with the official party line by groups around the country. The issue ceased to be one of truth or falsity, of evidence or ignorance. It became a matter of goodthink vs badthink.

It is possible that when it reacted to the emergency, the Committee might have been selective in collecting information. In its desire for unanimity, it might not have considered all the alternatives or other options for action.

Groupthink is a flawed process. Perhaps, the Committee might have erred in its actions earlier this month.