Hats off to Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan, head of the communicable disease branch of the Centre for Health Protection, who has become the face of Hong Kong’s war on Covid-19 and who has been a voice of calm in these challenging times. With the pandemic claiming too many lives, political talking heads have been looking to inflame public opinion, playing
the blame game. And so Dr Chuang’s careful use of words at the daily press briefings are not to be taken for granted.
Much of
the ugliness we are seeing daily from the most powerful people in the world is a classic political decoy – because so far, they have failed every step of the way, when it comes to crisis management.
Prevention? Failed. Preparedness? Failed. Response? Failing. Reconstruction? That may well be a silver lining, but we’re not even through the worst of this crisis yet, since researchers estimate that the United States – which now has the
most Covid-19 cases in the world – will not hit epidemic peak until next month, at the earliest.
The world will be holding its breath. If US President Donald Trump insists on meeting his “beautiful timeline” of reopening the country for business on Easter, we may see a resurgence of cases of infection.
Here in Hong Kong, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor has basically taken the other extreme. When we needed leadership from Lam, she was nowhere in sight.
And so it was quite a shock to see her
re-emerge last week to wring her hands over those who have been out playing ball or eating noodles when they should have been at home,
under quarantine.
Since the beginning of the outbreak, Lam has purposely kept herself distant, branding it a public health crisis and delegating its handling to public health experts and officials. That is the act of a bureaucrat, not a leader. Lam’s secretary for food and health, Professor Sophia Chan, has also recoiled from the public – after the
medical workers’ strike, Chan has made herself pretty scarce when it comes to public appearances.
Lam did not take the initiative to speak to the people directly – translating expert opinions and forecasts into terms and action items ordinary residents can understand and explaining the situation in Hong Kong, what the government is doing and what it would like people to do in response.
Meeting the press before Executive Council meetings is not very effective, because being pounded by questions at the podium makes Lam look as if she is not being forthcoming and straight with the public. To this day, it is a mystery why she will not sit down and do a broadcast to speak directly to the city’s residents.
Lam’s decision to leave all the talking to members of her expert panel on the viral outbreak is most unwise. Except for
Professor Gabriel Leung, dean of the University of Hong Kong’s Faculty of Medicine, members of the expert panel have had no political training. Hong Kong’s public health experts have become a broken record, having repeated “the next two weeks will be crucial” so many times that people have become desensitised to the sense of urgency. Many “two crucial weeks” have come and gone and people are now increasingly restless, frustrated and anxious.
It is no wonder then that Hongkongers feel they have been
fending for themselves. Hong Kong’s new normal involves securing face masks and wearing them, practising social distancing and, in some cases, making the conscious decision to break home quarantine orders.
Leaders taking a back seat when we need them to be visible and communicating the most have led us to this point: we are barely hanging on. The trust that we desperately need as a community has gone.
Mrs Lam, please rise to the occasion.
Alice Wu is a political consultant and a former associate director of the Asia Pacific Media Network at UCLA
