IMPACT OF COVID-19: REFLECTION ON PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
- “It’s our constitutional right to die of stupidity!”
- Making mockery of social distancing, No wonder US has highest death toll.
- This is so embarrassing.. Why! Do Americans always put money as a priority over health and safety?
Based on these two evidences, we can see that there are two different situations if we are trying to do a comparison between China and US. Even china is the first country that got affected but lower numbers of death was recorded compared to US.
𝙋𝙐𝘽𝙇𝙄𝘾 𝘼𝘿𝙈𝙄𝙉𝙄𝙎𝙏𝙍𝘼𝙏𝙄𝙊𝙉: 𝙋𝙐𝘽𝙇𝙄𝘾 𝘽𝙀𝙃𝘼𝙑𝙄𝙊𝙐𝙍
These two situations and the statement from Tun Dr. Mahathir really got me thinking on the correlation between “HOW PUBLIC IS ADMINISTERED” AND “HOW IT AFFECTS PUBLIC”. If we are talking from the view of public administration, we will think about “physical effects” or something that can be seen to measure the effectiveness of one particular policy. However, if we are talking from the view of psychology, we will tend to look on how one particular policy offers “psychological effects” on public. Simple example, government proposed Bantuan Sara Hidup (BSH) to help the public financially, increase their purchasing power indirectly leads to a good cycle of economy, something that can be seen and be measured. However, we don’t really know whether the policy of BSH is good for the public psychologically.
Early in 2018, we have been exposed to so many racial controversial issues, whereby the unfairness and dissatisfaction among races have been revealed. There were so many people started to talk about Malay special privileges, firstly, it was unfair for other races, second it has somehow affected the quality of the people. It was claimed that the privileges had ruined the Malays, they are not working for the betterment of life, because they were too comfortable to receive instead of working on it. When people try to compare the Malay people and Chinese, they found out that the statement is true, since most of the rich families are conquered by the Chinese. It has made the issue become more controversial, and leads to the change of government (other than Najib’s corruption), when people didn’t want to be under the wing of “government that keeps on giving”, they want “changes” so that the Malays will not remain undeveloped. It has given two different views, the government felt that it was good enough as they got to provide easiness in public’s life, while the public felt that it was not good for them psychologically.
Alright, that’s just the muqaddimah, because i want all of you to understand the concept first, so you can follow the whole discussion in this writing! Alright going back to our main point which is “US protest on the extension of MCO”. When i first knew about this issue, i was quite shocked because it was totally weird to say no to solution. All countries that got affected by the Covid-19 were decided the same thing to create social distancing and break the chain. It was like an unofficial world agreement, as it is advised by World Health Organization (WHO), all countries were agreed to this initiative except for the people of America. What is the reason? Why the people decide to act like that? Why the people become so ignorant while the whole world are supporting the same thing? There must be something wrong that has been the root of this protest.
If we refer to the statement, made by Tun Dr. Mahathir, it clearly tells us that how public is administered will affect how they behave. To compare the administration in US and China, surely it has such a big difference as they are practicing a different political system. We cannot deny the fact that state administration is heavily depending and influenced by the political situation in one particular country. American political culture contains a number of core ideals and values. Not all Americans share the same views, of course, but the vast majority subscribes to these general ideals, including liberty, equality, democracy, individualism, unity, and diversity. Political debates tend to be over how best to achieve these ideals, not over whether these ideals are worth having in the first place. US is the country that’s really concern about liberty, they even categorize into few categories, like economic liberty, personal liberty and political liberty. That means, we can say that Americans are self-administered compared to government-administered. Therefore, when the government asked them to stay at home due to movement control order, many of them tend to protest because they hold to what they think is right, they believe in personal liberty, there is no point to listen the government. Liberties that are given to them have been instilled to become their belief and principle as well, everything is private and personal.
When we talk about China public administration, it is completely two different things. The state took control of the factories, businesses, the land etc, on behalf of the people. There was no private ownership. The Communist Party of China (CPC) took control and the people worked on behalf of the common good. The idea of individual progress at the expense of others was not acceptable. Indirectly, the government had instil the feel of fear and respect to the government, they know that they must be loyal and obey and they are all bound to the laws and policies. It has made the responsibility of the government become easier to control their movement throughout this pandemic. Last but not least, it is undeniable that how government administer the public will affect their behaviour, attitude, way of thinking and actions. We cannot deny that the influence of politics is conquering our life, we are facing politics everyday directly or indirectly. Therefore, it is not weird for us to take the political principles as part of our personal influence, we are heavily influenced by them.
