MARCH 19 — Have you ever been assigned to a project at work where you are required to go into uncharted waters? It could be to reach out to a new market segment. Or your boss may have asked you to digitalise a work process which, for the longest time, was done manually?
Doing something new is not easy. Unlike routine work where one can refer to past practices to avoid pitfalls, starting something new is fraught with challenges. Mistakes are bound to happen and it’s easy for bystanders to criticise.
So it is with the 14-day movement control order (MCO) announced by Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin this week. Never in the country’s history has anything of this sort taken place. We are rolling this out for the first time.
Sure, mistakes were made. The implementation could have been better thought out. But anywhere in the world, even for developed countries like the US, any mass initiatives are bound to face road bumps and hiccups.
Remember Hurricane Katrina which hit New Orleans and its surrounding areas in 2005? Although the US government had lots of experience dealing with natural disasters, the magnitude of this hurricane was unlike anything it had seen before. Former US president George W. Bush received lots of flak for its handling.
Worldwide, national leaders are caught on the back foot in dealing with Covid-19. The world has never seen an epidemic of such proportions in modern times. In Australia, Prime Minister Scott Morrison was aghast with the “un-Australian” panic-buying witnessed in major cities there due to the Covid-19 outbreak.
Worldwide, leaders are experimenting with novel ideas on how to contain the Covid-19 virus, some with considerable success, but many too fumbled in areas like national lockdowns and mass testing while having to avoid national panic or mitigating the economic impact.
We are in uncharted territory. Give the government a break. Muhyiddin’s administration has made missteps. So has other governments the world over, including from developed nations. Two wrongs don’t make a right but at least show some empathy instead of occupying the bully pulpit as a keyboard warrior.
Now is not the time for snide remarks like, “See, this is what happens when the government is made up of backdoor politicians?”. The politics can wait until Covid-19 subsides. Saving lives and containing the spread of the virus can’t. It’s time we stand together and do our part by supporting the government, in whatever small ways, to combat this unprecedented contagion.
** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
