IT goes without saying that our indefatigable Director-General of Health Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah has become a national hero as our frontliners race against time to keep a global pandemic under control locally.

Top that off with a certain minister’s gaffe, and many have taken to seeing Dr Noor Hisham as Malaysia’s de facto leader in tackling the contagion.

Looking at technocratic leadership is not exclusive to Malaysia. The unconvincing, and at times, baffling way President Donald Trump is handling an escalating crisis in the US also makes Dr Anthony Fauci, an immunologist and National Institute of Allergy director, “the face of America’s fight against the coronavirus”.

Nevertheless, one should not come to the hasty conclusion that this is where we ditch political leadership for experts as tempting as it may be, seeing as to how many leaders abandon expertise for their own instincts.

To be sure, I am not saying leadership and expertise are mutually exclusive. Many politicians, such as Tharman Shanmugaratnam of Singapore and US Senator Elizabeth Warren (see her library of plans here), are known for being both politically inspiring and temperamentally wonkish.

Science doesn’t make policies, decisions do

However, to mistake expertise for leadership is to conflate science with governance. To put it simply, science informs policy. It does not make it. Decisions make policies. And, all decision-making is ultimately political.

For example, the UK’s response to the contagion is said to be driven by a highly influential paper published by researchers from Imperial College London. The country’s unorthodox approach was attributed to this until a recent recalibration, where a severe movement-restriction order, not unlike Malaysia’s, was imposed.

Granted, a lot of the heated discussions around the paper seem to have stemmed from misunderstandings of key concepts. For example, the strategy to gain “herd immunity” was depicted as letting the virus run loose and kill off a chunk of the population, something the paper clearly warns against.

But the UK government has not taken a science-backed decision against a non-scientific one, either. It has chosen one scientific line of reasoning against others, including expert opinions that dispute Imperial’s modelling.

And that decision is political. Not because it was chosen purely based on political expediency, but it was made by a leadership that is politically accountable to the people via the system of parliamentary democracy.

In this sense, the image of Prime Minister Boris Johnson flanked by the chief scientific officer and chief medical officer during a press conference best conveys the mix between expertise and leadership. In our case, getting out of the way of our very competent Dr Noor Hisham may be another “show” of leadership, even if it is ironically marked by the leadership’s absence.

Expertise no substitute for leadership

Another reason why expertise cannot be confused with political leadership is that the former tends to be narrow in its focus, while politics must appeal to a broad array of stakeholders. In other words, experts work with data, but leaders work with people, including experts.

When crafting a national response to an epidemic, politics is important because it is not only about adjudicating between scientific inputs, but also coordinating action, resources and priorities between institutions and stakeholders, extending beyond the healthcare industry. This is because we are not only facing a health crisis, but also an economic and social one.

When precisely do we start a lockdown, and when do we end it? What kind of lockdown are we doing? What are the exemptions? When do we mobilise the military or declare a national emergency? How do we balance economic damage with public health? What are the macro- and microeconomic policies to adopt? What is our immigration policy? How do we approach our international partners for help? Who gets what proportion of the resources? Where will aid go, and for how long will it go on? At what level should we hold our public debt? Should we go for bailouts or direct cash transfers à la universal basic income?

These are the mélange of questions to be tackled in this period of profound uncertainty. And it is not exactly clear what the “scientific” answers are to all of them, as even expert opinions diverge considerably on each.

Plus, the variety of expertise and interests involved results in scattered, and at times, conflicting priorities. For example, a virologist, an economist, a frontliner and a petty trader can all provide valid and legitimate perspectives. To balance between them and maintain harmony among the differences require both judgment and leadership.

There is also the question of ethics and culture, both critical when crafting an effective, legitimate and measured response. Science alone cannot account for effective public communication and mobilisation of state and social actors. It does not boost morale or provide a sense of certainty to people. Science may even freak people out with its focus on cold empiricism.

Govern with, not by science

One day, we may reach a point where sophisticated algorithms can help us make all the decisions we now surrender – hopefully not uncritically – to our political leaders. But for now, I reckon we are still more comfortable being ruled by humans instead of machines.

Also, expertise is not natural law, and that includes the expertise that will go into creating our hypothetical supercomputer overlords.

This binary between science and politics is unhelpful because neither domain is independent of the other. Expertise may form the basis of good decision-making, but it is no substitute for political decision-making. My emphasis on the political here is not about partisanship, but political accountability.

Most of us will never be able to do Dr Noor Hisham’s job given the level of expertise needed.

A better point of contemplation is, why are we allowing the scientific illiterati to get into positions of power in the first place (a problem that is more serious elsewhere) and how scientifically literate are we as a society?

Answering these questions will foolproof us against a turbulent future as we drive politics in a way that will allow our education, healthcare and economic systems to make Dr Noor Hisham and his successors’ job much easier. – March 31, 2020.

* A Forensic Science-Asian Studies hybrid, Nicholas Chan is interested in how authority is shaped, exercised, and more importantly, resisted in Southeast Asia.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.