People in the government rarely have the interests of the public as their primary goals. This has been like this since the invention of governments. But while with kings and queens of the middle ages it was apparent that it's the case, politician now a days with democracy, which allocates some control to the masses, have to pretend that they care about this thing of that thing, so that the masses would choose them to form the government. There is no reason to be a politician if you aren't fighting for some sort of control over the masses. Very rarely politicians are genuine, and even those that are, are swapped into the same scheming and manipulations of the public as any other ones. The competition demands thins kind of vicious behavior. The unfortunate truth is that for those manipulations of the masses, there should be mechanisms for such manipulations. And if the masses can get away from those mechanisms by forming ways to preserve their rightful freedoms, the government has to intervene and scheme something so that the freedom itself would sound like a bad idea to the masses.