While some were due to unforeseen circumstances, there were some decisions made by the government that were purely head-scratching.

After keeping mum all this while, the Malaysian Prime Minister has finally decided to come out and explain the matter.

Nature of the pandemic

During an exclusive interview with Radio Televisyen Malaysia (RTM) on Sunday (23 May), PM Muhyiddin Yassin attributed the government's sometimes flip-flop decisions to the dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic itself.

Muhyiddin told RTM’s Bicara Khas programme that the rakyat feels that the SOPs were ever-changing because the nature of the pandemic forces the government to change as well.

"On why the common folks think it’s ever-changing, it is so because COVID-19 is similar in nature. Situations change. It’s not static, dynamic.

"And we follow the situation in order to make adjustments to address ongoing issues," he said during the interview, which was quoted by Malay Mail.

Muhyiddin revealed that he is well aware of the the feedback provided by the rakyat, and he admitted that the ever-changing SOPs can get a little bit confusing after a while.

However, he doesn't want Malaysians to think that the SOPs were confusing, but rather, as an improvement of existing measures.

To stress on the point, Muhyiddin also shared an example during the interview of how the ‘dynamism’ of the pandemic has forced the government to make several U-turns on the restaurant dine-in rules.

"For example, on allowing dine-ins. Then the policy was rescinded. At first, four diners were allowed, then two diners.

"If there was no COVID-19, we operated normally and during the early stage of the pandemic, we relaxed the rule and when cases exponentially increased, we withdrew the policy," he was quoted as saying.

Source of confusion?

OK, we are pretty bad at reading between the lines, but there seems to be a part of the interview where Muhyiddin kinda blames the rakyat for not understanding the SOPs released by the government.

When the presenter stressed that the government needs to provide concise explanations every time the SOPs changes, the prime minister admits that there will not be any confusions if people managed to grasp fully the SOPs announced by the government.

To help eliminate the confusion, Muhuyiddin said that his minsters and officials have been providing explanations every time the SOPs changes, adding that the government do not draft the SOPs on a whim but instead after a thorough discussion.

The govt should not blame the pandemic

While we agree that the government should change the SOPs from time to time to break the chain of infection, we do not think that the ever-changing SOPs were due to the 'dynamism' on the pandemic at all.

Being under a lock down for more than a year now, we have seen time and time and time again (we've lost count, to be honest) how the government changes the SOPs almost immediately after the rakyat question the reasoning behind some of their head-scratching SOPs.

For instance, the SOPs for Chinese New Year were changed less than three days after it was released after they were criticised by the rakyat and even politicians.

The same thing happened to the 'no outdoor exercise' rule implemented by the government during the early days of MCO 3.0; it was then overturned less than 48 hours later after the guidelines caused confusion.

Hence, we feel that all these flip-flop decisions contradict the Prime Minister's statement of how the government only releases SOPs after a thorough discussion.

Sadly, we've seen enough proof and cofusion, even among the country's own authorities, that the government's modus operandi is 'announce first, think about it later'.

So, Mr Prime Minister, while we really do appreciate that the government is very working hard to contain the pandemic, it would also help every one out a lot if the SOPs and their detailed explanations are released simultaneously and not a day or two or maybe a week after.