Crisis management speech

Situation: The vice-president of a political party has been arrested by the police under charges of corruption; there are 50 detainees in total.

Successful crisis management (according to the manual)

1.    Identify your message

2.    Know what you can’t say

3.    Show concern

4.    Provide relevant information

5.    Be truthful

6.    Do not guess

7.    Admit mistakes

8.    Admit that you don’t know everything

Successful crisis management (according to Machiavelli)

1.    State welfare is responsibility of the Leader

2.    And should be achieved by any means possible, including deceit and intrigue

3.    Leader’s morality  is less important than state welfare

4.    Leader will be judged by results obtained rather than means used

5.    Conclusion: a prudent Leader cannot and should not stand by his words

Here is the speech

Fellow citizens

-    First, I would like to apologize before you, the citizens.

-        I understand that you, the people of this country, are fed up with what we are seeing these days.

-        And I understand the annoyance of the citizens. We certainly had some rotten apples in our basket

-        I trusted my deputy, but he betrayed my trust

-        I made a mistake, but who doesn’t, sometime during his life?

-        Should I know what he was all about, I would have fired him immediately.

-        ‘Cause I am incompatible with corruption.

-        Resign? Would you trust someone who abandons the ship in the middle of a storm?

-        The fact that this scheme has been discovered is a proof that the Judicial System is working.

-        Corruption is everywhere, it happens in other countries too.

-        In this country if you commit a crime, you have to face the consequences for what you do

-        Those who are corrupt should go to jail

-        Justice is equal for all

-        But, till now, we don’t know what really happened.

-        This is something for the Courts to decide

-        In the meantime we are going to set up a parliamentary enquiry and

-        We are going to promote legislation to make enforcement easier

-        As for the rest of the arrested, I didn’t knew them

-        But, this doesn’t mean the all the party is corrupt. It’s just some individuals. 99% of politicians are honest.

-        Nothing to do with my political party, it’s just the individual.

-        All than I can say to you is that we definitely will uproot the weeds

-        And make sure this never happens again

-        As for the opposition, they don’t have the moral authority to criticise us, because

-        They have plenty to be ashamed of