Doing Her Job

 New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Ms. Jacinda Ardern has just won a landslide in New Zealand’s latest election. Ms. Ardern won some 49.1 percent of the votes cast and has 64 seats in the 120-seat parliament. It is, as the BBC reported, one of the rare occasions when a New Zealand Government has an outright majority.

What makes Ms. Ardern’s victory so incredible is the fact that, on the scale of things, a “newbie” politician who had not held any ministerial posts prior to her elevation to the premiership. Ms. Ardern had been a researcher prior to being elected as a Member of Parliament on the Party List in 2008 and only faced her first election in 2017, when she became a Member of Parliament for the Mount Albert Constituency in 2017, the year she became Leader of the Opposition and then Prime Minister. Within three years of taking the top job in politics, Ms. Ardern has gone from a relative unknown leader of a small country tucked at the edge of the world to being a global figure that has defined an ideal of leadership.

How did Ms. Ardern do it? The first part of the answer is what former British Prime Minister, Harold McMillian called “events.” Mr. McMillian argued that careers in politics were defined by events. Winston Churchill for example, was defined by World War II. How a politician reacted to a significant enough event would have the ability to define his or her legacy.

In Ms. Ardern’s case, history decided to give her not one but two major events, namely the March 2019 Christchurch Mosque shooting and the 2020 Covid-19 Pandemic. Both these events defined Ms. Ardern as someone that could be relied when the proverbial crap hit the fan.

The second part of the answer as to what turned her into an international superstar is the fact that she simply did her job as a leader. She showed she had the ability to communicate clearly and to provide real information when it was needed. She showed that she could be tough and empathetic at the same time and more importantly, she had the ability to get things done during the down times.

Copyright – theweek.in

In the Christchurch mosque incident, Ms. Ardern was quick to done a headscarf to show solidarity with the victimized community and refused to speak the name of the gunman, thus denying a terrorist publicity he hopped to gain. New Zealanders stayed united by the tragedy as the following Maori Hakka by a biker gang showed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIcfVTP43Yk

More importantly, Ms. Ardern used thus momentum to get gun control legislation passed through parliament.  

If the Christchurch Shooting put Ms. Ardern on the world map, her handling on theCovid-19 pandemic further enhanced her status as an icon of great leadership.  New Zealand does have the advantage of being relatively small and geographically isolated but this should not detract from the fact that Ms. Ardern once again provided text book leadership. New Zealand went into lockdown mode early and Ms. Ardern was quick to communicate to New Zealanders that they would face economic hardship but it was necessary to get the pandemic under control. The results speak for themselves. At the time of writing, New Zealand has less than 2,000 cases.

The most important part of her leadership was the fact that she showed that she was willing to enforce the rules with no exceptions. She demoted her health minister, Dr. David Clark who took his family on a beach vacation during the first week of the lockdown. The message was clear, nobody was above the rules.

https://www-businessinsider-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.businessinsider.com/nz-health-minister-david-clark-demoted-beach-trip-coronavirus-lockdown-2020-4?amp

New Zealand has come as close as has been possible to beating the virus. It did have certain advantages like geographical isolation. Yet, that alone would not have been enough to make New Zealand one of the key success stories in the Covid-19 pandemic. Ms. Ardern’s leadership shown that it’s not so much a case of size but what you do with it that counts.

Let’s start with the obvious. Ms. Ardern has recognized the seriousness of the situation and communicated facts quickly, clearly and most importantly factually. Unlike her American counterpart, she’s avoided “downplaying” the virus and unlike her Brazilian counterpart understood that the virus is serious. Ms. Ardern has led by example and stayed healthy and not turned the seat of government into a hotbed of infection.

Unlike her Indian counterpart, she’s also done things that have been possible to execute and hence you don’t have the congestion of infrastructure that was seen in India as people were forced to stagger back to far away villages at the last minute.

Ms. Ardern has also done what her Singapore counterpart could not do, which was to remember ALL New Zealanders. While Singapore has a similar death rate from Covid-19 to New Zealand (and similar population), its case load was significantly higher. Why was that? The answer is simple – Ms. Ardern focused on doing her job at hand and remembered ALL living in New Zealand. While Singapore’s statistics remain comparatively good on the global scale, it was too focused on headlines that it forgot about a certain segment of society that was living in conditions designed to spread the virus. 

Her insistence that her ministers followed the same rules as everyone else also made it easier for ordinary New Zealanders to go through the economic hardship caused by the lockdown.  She turned down a salary increase and ensured that the ordinary person understood that the rules were for everyone for a reason.

Covid-19 has been tough on everyone. However, like all good crisis, it has helped to show up real leaders that the world needs and thanks to Ms. Ardern, New Zealand has shown that a small nation can show the rest of the world how things are done by doing her job.

Nobody Notices when you are Bald – Everyone Notices when you Comb Over

One of the earliest bits of advice when I started losing my hair in my late teens came from my Dad. He said, “Whatever you do, NEVER comb over and NEVER get a hair transplant. Somehow nobody notices when you are bald but everyone notices you when you comb over or have a hair transplant.”

My Dad was right. As I got older, I realised that nobody really gave two hoots about bald men. If anything, being bald can be a fashion statement. Just look at Andre Agassi who was a teenage sex symbol known for his long bushy mane (apparently it was a wig). Later on he shaved bald and his status as a sex symbol strengthened. On the other hand, everyone notices the guys who comb over. The most prominent comb over was Dr Cheong Choon Kong, former CEO of SIA and currently the Chairman of Overseas Chinese Banking Corporation. Dr Cheong’s comb over was so prominent that it provided a little but of comic relief during the tragedy of SQ Flight 006, which crashed in Taiwan.

Like it or not, baldness is not an uncommon trait for men. As such, we, the folliclely challenged, either learn to live with it or we try to hide it. Despite the fact that hiding it usually draws more attention to it, there are men who persist in doing things like combing over the growing bald spot with the few strands of hair that they have.

I have recently discovered another version of the comb over. This new breed does not have to worry about follicles on the head. Instead, this new breed deals with things like money or the lack of it. Let’s call this breed the story teller.

Being broke is a little like being bald – more of us are broke than we care to admit to. Like being bald, many of us feel that being broke is a little embarrassing and so, the temptation to hide being broke is quite strong. It’s generally easier to hide being broke than it is to hide being bald. However, the efforts to hide being broke sometimes reach proportions that can be compared to the valiant effort to hide a growing bald spot.

One of the silliest examples of an effort to hide being broke is “Oooppss, I forgot my wallet at home.” This is apparently a very handy excuse when you happen to be meeting people for the very first time and don’t have the finances to cover a round of drinks. Unfortunately, this is also the type of story that reveals that you’re not being entirely honest – who in this day and age forgets their wallet when they go out for drinks?

The efforts to cover up the fact that you are broke can be quite amusing. However, there comes a point when telling stories can reveal plenty about your character or rather lack of it. Story tellers like comb overs have an insecure streak that borders on dishonesty. Like the comb over, the sad thing about the story teller is usually most dishonest with him or herself.

Young Muslim Politicians serving National Service from the comfort of the bed room (Thumbi Pundeks) are especially prone to telling stories to cover up for their inadequacies.

This young PAP cadre who is currently living off his father and the tax payer believes that he is an important person and he’s very rich. Somehow, somewhere in his gene pool and education, he’s been told that he’s entitled to spend other people’s money on ipads and expensive prostitutes. Thanks to his father and the Singapore tax payer, the Young PAP cadre believes that anyone who cannot spend money such items is only one level above shit.

However, this façade that he’s valiantly trying to pursue has its limits. Money, like other resources has a way of running out and when you don’t have money, it’s rather hard to pretend that you have pots of the stuff.

The Young Pariah has discovered a way of dealing with it. It’s called – talking shit. He’ll announce to you that he’s dying to “treat you.” Then you go out with him, he’ll order food without looking at the price tag. Just before the bill comes, he’ll then ask if it’s OK if you put it on your credit card and he’ll draw cash from you later on. One would suggest to anyone agreeing to such a deal that you march him to the ATM immediately after you have finished – because his understanding of later can be rather elastic. Of course, you’ll have to deal with him trying to bargain with you and when you point out to him that he was supposed to treat you – he’ll look indignant and tell you, “But I just spent $400 on an new cover for my phone, you don’t expect me to have money do you?”

Another variation of the scam that this Young PAP Cadre from Pasir Ris GRC will try pull is this – “I’ll treat you, let’s go somewhere classy.” He’ll then tell you that he only has $30 on him once you’ve sat down for a meal. He’ll gladly except it if you pass him an extra $10 to cover the unmentioned cost like GST and service charge. Suddenly, when the bill comes, you’ll find that he gets change of over $15. You check the bill and find that you’ve ordered less than $30 bucks worth and he’s paid $50 of cash, excluding your $10. When you ask him about it, he returns $10. I suppose you could say he has a point – he said he’d treat you but he didn’t say he’d pay GST or service charge.

Young Pariah’s are a bit like bald men trying to cover up their bald spots. However, unlike the bald men trying to cover up the bald spot with their remaining three strands of hair, the Young Pariah has been allowed to enter politics and is sometimes portrayed as a person that the Deputy Prime Minister might want to associate himself with.

If you were to believe that the ruling party tolerates characters with such a high sense of self-esteem and integrity, you might be wanting to ask yourself if the ruling party is trying to hide something too?