Performances of public officials

More news and reports about scandals, briberies and corruption of public officials are revealed by the global mass media now, which remind us to seek suitable measures for evaluating the performances and achievements of public officials. People tend to establish the ethical criteria to judge the quality of a public official, while as is known to us, to be an effective leader, public officials should hold more characteristics significant rather than the ethical and moral merits.

Undoubtedly, people, no matter what roles they act as, should maintain the highest ethical standards for the prosperity and achievement of the whole world, especially for the public officials. In a democratic society, public officials elected by the people represent the public's interests. Their speeches, decisions and actions deeply influence others. So, public officials must obey the baseline of social standards with the possession of morality.

On the contrary, without the restraint of the ethical criteria, a public official is inescapable to take the will of satisfying their selfishness against the public's interests in front of allurements, which could severely draw back the development of society for frustrating the people's prospects. In order to evaluate a public official's efficiency and performance, people should take an overlook of the person for their merits, such as competence, shrewdness, wisdom, enlightenment, eloquence, tolerance and so on. Admittedly public leaders sometimes have no choice to withhold information from the public for many reasons — national security and social prosperity — which separate the leaders from the ordinary people's value and judgement, in spite of bearing suffering and misunderstanding. Thus it is unfair for people to judge public officials only on the view of ethicality and morality.

Unquestionably, everyone bears the hope to have flawless leaders with ambition, aggression, capability, honest and most importantly, morally pristine. Unfortunately, however, such saints could only exist on screens. Most of the public leaders, no matter how perfect they seem to be, are actually the same people as you and me with shortcomings as we have. But these flaws do not prevent them from being outstanding leaders, and people rationally can tolerance and accept them together with the great contributions and achievements.

In sum, when people intend to evaluate a public official's performance and efficiency, they should take a more comprehensive and profound view rather than only stand on the position of ethicality, though such merits are prerequisite but not determinant.