Q: Is there a way, nonetheless in which politics can facilitate coordination between national political elites and local government officials as well?
Answers
Answer:
Explanation:
In light of news Donald Trump has his wife Melania have tested positive for Covid-19, we have re-issued this article first published in The Interpreter on 31 March outlining the challenges of protecting leaders from infection.
Since the onset of Covid-19, we have entered a twilight world few would have expected to witness outside of popular dystopian fantasies. While we are now receiving a steady stream of public updates on the virus and what we should be doing, we have seen a worrying trend of increasing numbers of leaders and significant others around the world succumbing to infection by the virus.
What are our leaders doing to protect themselves to enable them to lead us to the other side of this crisis? Is there a different standard of elite leadership security between that of totalitarian regimes and that of democracies?
Until recently, many would have considered the security practices of North Korea’s Kim Jong-un’s close personal protection team, in which they ensure the isolation of their Supreme Leader, as being slightly paranoid and overdone. But the Kims have long embraced a variety of protective measures, from the medieval to the modern, to safeguard their leadership dynasty – everything from the use of food testers to simply fleeing to more isolated areas of the country. Other tyrants are also ensuring they are not exposed to the virus, with Vladimir Putin reportedly being vigilantly subjected to 24-hour protection and putting on a yellow hazmat suit to visit patients in an infectious diseases hospital.
Perhaps leaders in the democratic world should be a little more attentive to their personal health and safety to enable them to attend to their responsibilities. Reports of US President Donald Trump’s cavalier and blasé attitude and misinformed statements are a concern for not only his security but also those who look to him for leadership and a pathway out of this crisis. It seems some of the more authoritarian approaches to this crisis and their expertise, as exhibited in China, are being sought after, rather than looking to the US for leadership.
The list of the free world’s political class, including royalty and other elites, succumbing to infection is steadily rising with the addition of Britain’s Prince Charles, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and Health Secretary Matt Hancock. Other European elites include European Union chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier; Begoña Gomez, the wife of the Spanish prime minister; and Prince Albert of Monaco. Spain’s Princess Maria Teresa is the first royal to have died of the coronavirus, and there are reports of a servant of the British Monarch being infected.