By ’Tunji Ajibade
08036683657; tunjioa@yahoo.com
The UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, is as at the centre of a storm. The opposition parties are asking him if he would resign. The backdrop was how parties were held in 10 Downing Street in the middle of the covid-19 pandemic back in 2020. The matter has been out there since late 2021. Johnson has been providing his excuses and explanations for that length of time. But the sense of scandal around this just wouldn’t go away. Citizens are not happy with the fact. Opposition politicians are making a party out of the matter. It’s a difficult position Johnson has found himself in.
No doubt, it is of importance that those in leadership positions act responsibly with regard to what they do. They must be, and must be seen to be conducting themselves in the manner they expect citizens to. They make the rules. they must abide by the same rules. They must be the best examples of what they want others to be. During the worst phase of the covid-19 lockdown in the UK in 2020, citizens did their best to do exactly what public officials said. But as it is now known, garden and house parties were held in the seat of government. That doesn’t come across right. Citizens have the right to be outraged, and so they are.
Nonetheless, the current situation in which the PM has found himself calls attention to a few issues. It’s about the entire picture citizens have of government officials. We all need to be more realistic. Now this is not to justify any official setting the rules and breaking them. It’s more of the need to be realistic about the human side to public officials whom we mistakenly take to be anything more than human. Let’s think about it: It was covid-19 pandemic, a time when citizens looked up to government officials to lead them in practically every aspect of social and economic life. Public officials are to provide vital information on what to do, how to and how not to gather, when to go out and when not to go out. Public officials had to be several times as busy as they used to be in normal times. They had to sacrifice everything from sleep, to annual leave, to breaktime, to time they spend with their own families. Some of them had to stay away from families upon the slightest suspicion that they might have had contact with covid-10 carriers in the course of carrying out their official duties; all of that in the interest of nation and citizens.
This situation brings one to the matter of high expectations citizens have of public officials. They are sometimes erroneously regarded as infallible beings, the super humans who should be on their feet when everyone else is on their backs resting. Public officials have infinite energy. They are tireless, the efficient machines that need no rest as everyone else does. They have all the answers. This seems the general view. But this is not true of any human. Yet everything superhuman was, as usual, attributed to public officials at Downing Street when the covid-19 was biting hard in 2020. The list of what they had to do for the rest of the nation to feel they were doing something was long. There were the covid-19 medical supplies that had to be rushed in from every part of the world. Citizens wanted to tear these public officials apart over noted lapses. There were the foodstuff on shelves in superstores that government officials were expected to ensure were there for everyone else. Citizens criticized government officials strongly when they were not. There were other issues that these officials had to contend with as well. Public officials were the solution to every problem citizens had. But no one was a solution to the grueling and tiring burden they had on their shoulders. These guys had nowhere to go and ease off the tension under which they had been operating for the good of the nation. No one thought about their well being at a time they were preoccupied giving their best so that the rest of the citizens would be at rest.
It was in the midst of their tedious task that these public officials gathered within the confines of their working environment to relax. The PM joined the team he had been working with to wind down in the restricted environment they had. One would wish this was the narrative Johnson put out there to aggrieved citizens, the narrative of the human nature of him and other government officials which required them to take time off and relax and bond. He could have done so using diverse communication channels for the purpose of getting citizens to understand that he and his team were human and they needed the coming together in that restricted setting to relax as well as bond. He could have pushed this narrative much earlier than now, rather than the denials and the latest admission of guilt as well as the apology. I thought this could have been done last year, not this year. Had he, he could have entered the new year hoping the whole saga would have been put behind him.
Nonetheless, there are still a host of things Johnson has got going for him even while he’s in the eye of the storm. He is the best prospect for the Conservative Party if an election happens anytime soon. He communicates well with the people. He makes mistakes, but that does not mean he has lost the support of his many supporters. He may be behind in the polls but he remains a strong contender as the leader of his party. He can come out of this, limping, but his party members have to support him if he must. I hope they do. Also, I hope citizens are more humane in their expectation regarding hardworking public officials who were winding down and bonding for the purpose of getting better motivated to provide the services citizens and nation needed at that worst moment during the pandemic. Johnson is human. Other public officials he works with are human. They said they made a mistake. The man who leads them has apologized. I wish citizens would accept and let the PM and the nation move on.
