"If we can't rise above this, then we don't deserve to survive," Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew told reporters last weekend, choosing the day of Singapore's first flight-related funerals to deliver a reminder that life must go on. In the immediate aftermath, the role of the government in dealing with the crisis was predictable and rapid.

Public-relations officers from the Ministry of Information and Arts helped Singapore Airlines process and deliver news to the media ranks massed at Singapore's Changi Airport. Government ministers were dispatched to Taiwan to see the devastation first-hand, support local authorities and offer condolences to the bereaved and injured.

When Yong Kay, the managing director of Taiwan's Aviation Safety Council and leader of the investigation into the accident, made the shocking revelation Nov 3 that the plane had been on the wrong runway, the Singaporean government quickly shifted emphasis.

Even before Singapore Airlines' deputy chairman and chief executive, Cheong Choong Kong, responded formally to news of the fatal runway mix-up, the government had already staked its reputation on revealing the disaster's full causes.

"Singapore will be judged by how open we are about how the accident happened, how much we learn from it, and what systems we put in place so as not to repeat," the government said in a statement.

The immediate focus on transparency and the direct link to the government's reputation echoes a progressive, if limited, move towards openness fostered in recent years by Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong.

To date, the opening of a Speaker's Corner in Hong Lim Park - modelled on its counterpart in London's Hyde Park, except that participants must register themselves and the content of their remarks with officials in advance - is the highest-profile example of openness, Singapore-style.

Notably, at the weekend, Mr Goh was urging Singaporeans who felt frustrated by life in the Lion City not to emigrate but, instead, work within its political system for change. Mr Lee also picked up the theme of openness. "The important thing is we want to be honest," he said, "open, get down to the bottom of it, make sure that the lesson is learned."

Government comments on Singapore Airlines - long hailed as a symbol of the country's success - have been finely balanced. On the one hand, there has been full backing for the company's handling of the affair, but on the other, ministers have distanced themselves from the airline, especially on commercial matters.

Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong praised the carrier for its rapid response to the disaster but would not be drawn on the thorny issue of compensation for the victims' families. "It is up to [Singapore Airlines] to decide," said Mr Lee Hsien Loong. "They're a listed company. They are answerable to shareholders. They have to make the judgment."

Above all, however, government ministers appear keen for local people to draw a lesson from the grim tales of lives lost and the uplifting ones of survivors' courage. In the twisted wreckage of flight 006, Singapore's leaders see an opportunity to revitalise their people.

"When such a thing happens, there is shock, there is alarm, disappointment, great sorrow," Mr Lee Hsien Loong continued. "I think that we can still be the best, and it is a matter of pride that we prove it."