Government Public Relation Crisis Strategy Analysis

Government Public Relation Crisis Management is where the government adapt certain strategies to communicate and to release information to the general public, which includes information strategy, propagation strategy and crisis management strategy. A successful public relation crisis management will determined the strength and to consolidate the ruling party position in the government.In recent years, due to numerous reasons and unforeseen circumstances, the Malaysia government has often been vulnerable to all sorts of governance crisis, thus, Public Relation Crisis Management has become an essential and important tools for all levels of government agencies and political parties in order to maintain its good image and governing power. Especially after the 12th Malaysia General Election on 8th of March 2008, where Malaysia has become a two tier governing structure. The development of democracy ideology phenomenon has created awareness among the society where they expect and demand high level of crisis management ability from the ruling government. In line with this, the construction of the image of the ruling government has form a great challenge.During the Governing tenure of the Coalition of Pakatan Rakyat in Selangor State of Malaysia, It had introduced and implemented a higher degree of integrity in its governance policy. But the outbreak of the letter of support incidents’ where its own coalition members, an appointed government officer has been suspected of corruption and abuse of power had struck arguable questions on their integrity policy and reputations in the public perception. The coalition government then launches its damage control after the incident happened with its public relation crisis management but it has not achieved its expected results. The research for this thesis will be on the case study on the ’letter of support crisis’.Through discourse analysis, We will be able to analysis the effectiveness of the Public Relation crisis management and communication strategies. It also analysis of why the government crisis management fails and to understand the basis for the government’s public relations and to proposed recommendations.The study of this thesis is based on the Chinese media reports and comments, as well as interviews with key people in the event. The conclusion, the coalition government of Pakatan Rakyat in Selangor has lake of foundation on its Public Relation crisis management. To improve or to strengthen it, the government has an obligation to improve its crisis management system and its propagation system. In addition, the government need to strengthen its accountability in order to restore its images and public trust on the government. Besides that, the government need to adapt the mentality of the importance of constructing an image of good governance as their basic operation. Good governance will ease and help in crisis management.