ENHANCING GOVERNMENT RELATIONS THROUGH PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT: THE AFTERMATH OF CHRISTCHURCH MOSQUE ATTACKS

Abstract

To the world, New Zealand has always been conceived as a safe and peaceful country, however has pronounced its two sequential massive terrorism attacks of mosque shooting in Christchurch, during Friday prayer, on March 15th, 2019. The attack started at the Al Noor Mosque at 1:40pm which followed by the second attempt at the Linwood Islamic Centre 15 minutes subsequently. A 28-year old Australian-citizen gunman has live streamed the attack via his Facebook account - the tragedy has claimed the lives of 51 and injured 49 others. Evidently, numbers of politicians and world leaders criticized the attacks, and as the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern in her standing ovation at Christchurch Memorial deemed saying that the attack witnessed as ‘one of New Zealand darkest days’ and ‘the role of combating terrorism attacks, condemnation of violence turn now to a collective response, not the government alone’. Collective response through public engagement is fairly a new term and practice that comprises of various ways to assemble people together as a mean of putting the public concerns forward. In this context of crisis, the government has constantly encouraged open communication with the citizens, the affected family members, in particular, by involving interaction, and listening. With the goal of generating mutual resolution, these efforts are considered as a compliment to a practicing democratic country as direct involvement of ordinary people in a crisis resolution is significantly noticeable. The main contribution of this paper lies at the government efforts at repairing the damage and securing the well-being of nations.