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By Mamdoh S. Al-Ameri

More news and reports about scandals, briberies and corruption of the public officials are revealed by the global mass media now, which remind us to seek a suitable measure for evaluating the performances and achievements of public officials. People trend to establish the ethical and moral 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 and moral standards for the prosperity and achievement of the whole world, especially for the public officials. In a democratic society, public officials who elected by the people, represent the public's interests and serve the people for their awarded trusts and reputations mostly based on the ethical and moral standards in the society. Their speeches, decisions and actions deeply influence other people including the trends of the society. So, public officials must obey the baseline of the social standards with the possession of ethicality and morality.


On the contrary, without the restraint of the ethical and moral criteria, a public official is inescapable to take the will of satisfying his/her selfishness against the public's interests in front of allurements, which could severely draw bake the development of society for frustrating the people's prospects. When a public official abuse his/her power, what a disaster or blunder could he/she make! People for a long time would have to take the suffers of the World War Two caused by one person's ill-will, and people also would not forgive such cases as setting wiretaps to the counterpart and forswearing himself against the jury even though the parties are in the position of President.


In order to evaluate a public official's efficiency and performance, people should take a overlook of the person for his/her 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 lots of reasons - national security and social prosperity - which separate the leaders from the ordinary people's value and judgment, 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 and morality, though such merits are prerequisite but not determinant.