What Covid rule-breakers are trying to tell us

 

If he could, Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah would choose not to appear in front of public. He dislikes being the centre of attention, rejects the “hero” label, and he has not made a press conference in over two months. Until now.

Behind the face mask lies a battered man. After the long-drawn battle with the virus, the last thing he wanted to see was record highs of infected cases and death counts. We are nowhere near victory.

He started his press conference with the usual reporting. He warned us of the danger of celebrating too early and how India’s “tsunami” provided us a lesson.

“On 7th March, the leaders of India declared that the management and control of Covid-19 was very good and they would see the end of Covid in India. That was when gathering happened near the beaches, gathering happened for religious purposes,” he said.

“Secondly, they had five state elections… without social distancing and the wearing of face masks. That’s where the spread occurred.”

Noor Hisham showed a rare sign of anger when he talked about the “extraordinary times” we are living in.

“If you are infected, you come to the hospital, and there are no ICU beds, then we are in trouble,” he said. “We do not to be like other countries where we have to decide on who should live and who should die.”

He ended with his common refrain of complying with the SOP, wear face masks, wash your hands, and practise social distancing.

The Health director-general’s advice does not have the power it used to have. Every day, people are still taking the risk of crossing states and districts for “lame” excuses like sending clothes and gifting cookies.

The police of Besut even found the barricade and thorn fence they erected being set on fire. “It seems like those people wanted to show their dissatisfaction as their widely used ‘jalan-jalan tikus’ was barred at the border of Besut, Terengganu and Pasir Putih, Kelantan,” the police said.

The frustration, restlessness, and anger that people feel of the Covid-19 rules are perhaps not a coincidence. Noor Hisham empathised when he said that “the people are already fatigued, both mentally and physically. It’s been 16 months since we started fighting this disease.”

Time might be a factor, but it is not the only factor for non-compliance.

Effort-reward imbalance

First, the people must believe that what they doing is working. When MCO 1.0 was announced last March, Malaysians were one of the most compliant countries in the world. The people’s efforts (sacrificing freedom and interest by staying at home) paid off when cases dropped to single digits (rewards).

But that effort-reward was quickly thrown off balance when our rules relaxed too quickly. The mass mobilisation in Sabah’s statewide election accelerated the birth of sticky clusters that ushered a fresh mix of fear, uncertainty, and risk-taking behaviours.

The declaration of emergency was a greater overkill. Despite the dramatic sleight of hand, cases did not go down and this has exacerbated how people understood efforts and rewards. It is not unreasonable for people to think that their actions do not have a direct relationship to the outcome.

The effort-reward imbalance created an adverse stress among the people, which made them bigger risk-takers and greater rule-breakers.

Second, the people must respect those making the rules. When Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin went on public television in the second quarter of the last year, Malaysians treated it as a major event. People are eager to know the latest developments and they were willing to comply so that we could flatten the curve.

But this has changed rapidly as the times went on. The uneven enforcement of the SOPs by providing preferential treatments to celebrities and politicians created a foul sense of unfairness. Ministers who were given vaccination were allowed to travel when commoners were locked at home; returning ministers could avoid an already-shortened quarantine, whereas commoners faced longer and fine-attracting quarantine rules.

Double standards and preferential treatments continued to this day, with a repetition that acts as a mockery to the common people.

Suspending Parliament and providing virtually unfettered powers to the executive convinced people that the rules created were self-serving. All these entered the psyche of Malaysians and shop signs that say “wear a mask even if you’re a VIP” became a quiet and ordinary moment of revolt.

When people do not respect those who made the rules, any call for collective suffering becomes weak. Can we make sure we suffer together?

Contradictory rules

Third, the people must know what rules to follow. Against the rapidly changing, poorly coordinated, and obviously contradictory rules, the people are deprived of the single-most-important tool in times of a crisis: Certainty.

Without certainty on what rules to follow, people are forced to make up their own assumptions on what the rules could be. If an employee does not know if they require a company or police letter to travel 15km to work, he/she would just take the risk of going without one. This same risk-taking DIY rule-making behaviour would be carried forward to other activities, resulting in a chaotic state of affairs.

Companies that receive sudden change in SOP through live TV or just a tweet, might take drastic steps like a total shutdown, premature closures or become willfully ignorant of what was announced.

In the middle of each moral panic and financial losses, people would start to realise that perhaps the rule-makers do not have a better idea than they do. And that convinces people that their perception of rules is as valid as the rules themselves. This leads to a slippery slope of DIY rules by the people.

All of this is summarised in a central concept of “legitimacy”, which simply means that the people must respect the rules they are expected to follow.

Of course, this article is not meant to justify the rule-breaking behaviour of the irresponsible quarters. Fines and punishments should be meted in the event of an obvious and detectable breach.

But what I am saying is that they are not the only ones at fault. Because bad rule-makers beget mad rule-breakers. - Mkini

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JAMES CHAI is a legal consultant and researcher working for Invoke, among others. He also blogs at jameschai.com.my. You may reach him at jameschai.mpuk@gmail.com.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.