THE Covid-19 global pandemic has prompted a major question about leadership in a time of crisis: how to balance the importance of public health with the respecting of individual liberty?
The virus respects no borders. It cares little for how nations are run, whether through democratic governance or authoritarianism.
But democratic governments have already used the virus to crack down on freedoms, while those regimes that were authoritarian to begin with have used the pandemic to grab even more power. Hungary’s right-wing government offers perhaps the most striking example of how a crisis of public health has been used to further authoritarianism.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban has cited the virus spread to cancel all elections and remain in power indefinitely. He has invoked broad powers to limit air travel and individual movements.
There is no end date to the restrictions, nor any parliamentary review of his actions.
Likening the virus to the sort of “foreign influence” he has railed against, Orban said, “We are fighting a two-front war. One front is called migration, and the other one belongs to the coronavirus.”
In India, the world’s largest democracy and second most populous country, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has imposed the strictest lockdown in the world.
Announced with almost no notice, Modi upended life for more than a billion people with a mandatory 21-day lockdown to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
With hundreds of millions of people surviving on a hand-to-mouth existence, many homeless or displaced, such a draconian order did more harm than good.
Nearly two dozen people have died en route from Indian cities, including an 11-year-old who simply starved to death.
China, a nation whose authoritarian streak was already under international scrutiny, expanded its surveillance power under cover of the virus.
Public transport will now deploy facial recognition and temperature scanning technology to keep tabs on citizens with no oversight on how the data will be used, and no end date on data gathering.
Israel has taken it a step further, openly putting all residents under surveillance using their cell phone data to track those who have tested positive for Covid-19 and determining who has come into contact with them.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu waived parliamentary oversight on using such “anti-terrorism” measures to tackle the pandemic.
In the United States, the emergence of Covid-19 initially provoked almost no actions from the government. President Donald Trump was briefed about the devastating potential of the disease to take half a million lives in January but he was more deeply concerned about the health of the economy than that of American lives and repeatedly claimed, “No one saw this coming.”
And we must consider the case of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who also spent weeks refusing to take action against the virus and claimed he was seeking “herd immunity” for a large percentage of the population.
Johnson has now contracted the virus and sought intensive care at a hospital. Like others, he has realised an aversion to scientific facts doesn’t make you immune to the virus.
A crisis such as the one we are facing demands decisive action tempered with an abundance of caution about infringements of people’s rights.
Nations such as New Zealand are showing it can be done. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has acted decisively, but emphasised government transparency in decision-making over a virus-lockdown.
She has issued clear messages about the government’s strategy and goals for eliminating the virus spread and made herself available to the instruments of accountability in a democracy — namely the press.
South Korea also took quick action to tackle the virus after it first exploded into view.
President Moon Jae-in ordered widespread testing, imposed emergency measures on the epicentre of the outbreak, and isolated and treated patients swiftly.
Communicating clearly and often with the public, the government effectively turned around a public health crisis without resorting to heavy-handed or autocratic measures.
New Zealand and South Korea offer models for how governments can navigate unprecedented crises such as this.
The coronavirus is not just a threat to our personal and collective health; it is a threat to our democratic institutions as well.
The writer is the founder, host and executive producer of Rising Up With Sonali, a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times