Covidistan Annals XIX: Mückstein finally decreed the details, more snap election rumours (and insider info on this), and preliminary considerations about a 'hot spring'

The Supreme Court's questions may bring about a 180° turn by the ÖVP who will, quite likely, seek its fortunes in going on the offensive against its coalition partner by late February

It’s been quite a wild ride these past days. There’s so much happening over in Covidistan that it’s quite hard to keep up, but I promised I’d update you once ‘new’ stuff happens. So, I suspect that the Norwegian Covid numbers will have to wait (presumably until tomorrow or Thursday, when even more numbers will be available, so I’d have to beg your pardon in the meantime).

Still, this provides me with opportunity to write up the past couple of days in Covidistan, which may be summarised as follows: more cracks in ‘the narrative’ are becoming apparent every day, there’s more and more ‘institutional’ pushback, but the Committee of Public Safety isn’t ready to buck just (yet).

The Vaccination Mandate ‘in Practice’

Just yesterday, the parliament’s permanent select committee (Hauptausschuss) has approved the ministerial decree by Mückstein that defines the details of the mandate. While I’ll keep looking for the original piece, all I can serve you right now is a press release by the parliamentary press office (don’t bother with the legacy media, they all publish literally identical pieces), which holds that

The decree by Health Minister Mückstein (No. 160/HA) has been approved with the votes by the ÖVP, SPÖ, and the Greens, which defines, e.g., exemptions and the various vaccines to be applied.

Still, as tabloid Kronenzeitung reports (quite accurately), there’s a plethora of valid medical exemptions, which may apply to individuals undergoing bone marrow or stem cell therapy, organ transplantation, those who permanently undergo corticosteroid or hydrocortisone therapy (of > 20mg per day and for more than 2 weeks), immunosuppressed-but-not-cancer patients, ‘active cancer patients whose treatment via chemotherapy or other whose treatment has occurred in the past 180 days’.

Exceptions also made for those who ‘after three doses cannot provide evidence of antibodies’ as well as for—recovered, but all these medical exemptions are available for 180 days only (about 6 months).

Sidenote: the last (cancer) category is perhaps the most insidious part, and, honestly, Mückstein is a trained physician, which means he must (should) know that once a cancer patient, always a cancer patient. It’s bad enough to wake sleeping dogs, but cancers in remission aren’t to be monkeyed around with.

It is hardly surprising, then, that Mückstein (according to the Kronenzeitung) has a disapproval rating of -45%, with only 18% thinking he’s done a swell job recently.

Will there be a Snap Election?

Speaking of consequences, it’s now time to address Yakari’s recent comment about the prospects of the Committee of Public Safety. I’ve made my point known in a long-ish piece five days ago, and Yakari weighed in on the issue of a snap election in (late) spring in the follow-up piece on ‘the bigger issues’ at-hand.

Specifically, on 6 Feb. 2022 she held that, according to inside information from high-ranking ÖVP politicians, internal polling would look so bad that a break-down of the current government coalition with the Greens would be imminent, as in: beginning later this month, with ‘feelers’ reaching out to both the SPÖ and the FPÖ for future arrangements.

Even more recently, less than 24 hours ago, Yakari followed up on this with yet another comment (below the same piece), holding that ‘the ÖVP really seems to begin with their project to de-install the Grüne. Wind in mass media is changing’, which is clearly observable in these past few days. Weirdly enough, although Yakari holds strong opinions (which I deem quite plausible), the ‘side-letters’, i.e., the private arrangements accompanying the public coalition contracts, were leaked on purpose by the ÖVP ‘to destroy [the] Greens’.

Given the loathing among the former for Kurz’ resignation, brought about by Green vice chancellor Kogler’s insistence in mid-October 2021, this is highly plausible. Note that there will be scant references to the following big-ticket issues:

‘Ibiza’, by which is meant a full-blown PR and media debacle that led, in 2019, to the end of the ÖVP-FPÖ government under Kurz and a snap election that brought about the current ÖVP-Green régime.

‘Corruption Hearings’ refer to the repeated attempts of opposition parties—recently mainly the SPÖ and the Greens—to ‘uncover’ large-scale wrongdoing by those in power. This has been related to ‘Ibiza’ in part (there’s so much to cover here on this one, and I’ll get to it before too long), but these charges revolve mainly around systemic corruption among the inner circles of the ÖVP. The current parliament has instituted an investigational committee in recent days, which is supposedly going to look into this unholy mess (and which may only be stopped in its tracks by the dissolution of parliament).

And, last but not least, the staggering amounts of incompetence in all matters Covid-19—specifically Mückstein—that have been repeatedly called out publicly by the Freedom Party, but, according to the comment by Yakari, is also a position that’s held in the leadership circles of the ÖVP.

For those who wish, or even ‘desire’ more background on some of the information mentioned above, esp. on ‘Ibiza’ and its corruption-related fall-out, see my early-December three-part series here, here, and here.

Left-Liberal Daily Der Standard on the ‘Election Rumours’

Incidentally, last weekend Der Standard ran a long-ish piece on the rumours of a snap election. Leading with the following question—‘sale of offices, the pandemic, and the anti-corruption hearings: no rest for the government fuels rumours of new elections, but are they really realistic?’—Katharina Mittelstaedt and Michael Völker provide a listing of the main issues, noting many of the things that we discussed above.

As regards systemic corruption, mention is made of ever-more text messages coming out (thanks to the Anti-Corruption State Prosecutorial Service), which are very much damaging to the top ÖVP politicians, in particular Lower Austrian state governor Mikl-Leitner who used to run the Interior Ministry.

Virtually the entirety of the past two years was, of course, taken up by all matters Covid-19, but the fall-out of the corruption hearings, the leaked ‘side-letter’ (which, ironically, shows that the pro-immigration Greens traded influence at the state broadcaster ORF in exchange for one of their golden calves—a ban on scarfs and veils in public schools—which angered the self-declared and ultra-self-righteous inner-city hipsters, i.e., the Greens main supporters among the electorate), and the upcoming regular electoral campaigns are but a harbinger of defeat after defeat after defeat for both ruling parties.

• In late February, local elections will take place in the Tyrol.

• Presidential elections must be held by mid-November at the latest, and while the presidency is a mainly decorative office (albeit the office-holder has considerable powers), last time around, it took two rounds of voting as the regular vote was deemed invalid by the Supreme Court and despite the fact that current incumbent, the Green A. van der Bellen was facing FPÖ politician N. Hofer, the former eked out a victory with around 54% of the vote.

• Four out of Covidistan’s nine federal states—Lower Austria, the Tyrol, and Salzburg as well as Carinthia—have state elections scheduled for 2023. All but Carinthia (ruled by a SPÖ-led coalition) are traditional ÖVP heartlands, with Lower Austria being the big prize and the main power-base of former Interior Minister Mikl-Leitner.

All told, a busy and quite full electoral calendar, and the piece by Der Standard largely confirms the anger and frustration among top ÖVP politicians. A good deal of these emotions revolve (derive) from the upcoming anti-corruption hearings that may only be stopped in their tracks by dissolving parliament, which the Green president will, of course, be loath to do.

Yes, the piece also contends that Chancellor Nehammer is ready ‘to move on’ from all matters Covid-19, including a brief preview on the upcoming ÖVP convention, scheduled for spring.

The main information in this article, though, is the detailed description of the looming internecine struggles among the Greens, to which we now turn. These struggles have bedevilled the Green movement everywhere since its inception as a political phenomenon in the 1980s, by which is meant that these factions typically consist of two almost irreconcilable wings:

The ‘realos’, i.e., those who believe in incremental change through ‘normal’ behaviour in parliamentary democracies (think former German foreign minister J. Fischer).

And the ‘fundis’, i.e., fundamentalist purists, typically of some kind of pseudo-Marxisante ‘conviction’ without bothering to read any such texts before breathlessly uttering well-meaning, if selectively applied ‘principles’ (this is very much the case with Mückstein and his ilk, but the German Greens—above all foreign minister A. Baerbock—are like this, too). Note, too, that these stunning levels of ignorance are, of course, coupled with increasingly shrill demands of quasi-ideological purity reminiscent of other apocalyptic cults, but I digress.

In pre-Covid Austria, this debate was narrowly ‘won’, however temporarily, by the ‘realists’ who entered government as the junior (sidekick) partner of the ÖVP. Knowing full well that the ÖVP is the Black Widow of Austrian politics, it would appear—even back then—that the Greens harboured a kind of death wish, in particular since they briefly spent time outside parliament after a formal split in 2017, which lasted until 2019.

So, what are the Greens fighting about these days? It’s the same old, same old issue of quasi-ideological purity, augmented by the fact that vice chancellor W. Kogler is perceived by his own party as a super brown-noser to stay in office. Among the ÖVP, Kogler is seen as the villain who brought down former chancellor Kurz. In short, as illustrated by the below screen grab from early December, the Greens appear to hold a very bad hand.

What to Make of this Mess (plus more insider information)

Both ruling parties loath each other, albeit for very different reasons. In addition, the electoral schedule suggests that ‘change’ is coming soon.

On 18 Feb. 2022, Health Minister Mückstein must either offer substantive answers to a veritable laundry list of probing questions submitted by the Constitutional Court in late January.

Word has it that asking these questions is causing distress among the faithful Covidians, for now a venerable Supreme Judge has asked precisely those questions that were so far derided by the juste milieu as emanating only from the tinfoil hat-wearing far right-wing extremists. In addition, ‘even’ the Covidians—who so love the Court upholding the veneer of respectability in matters they favour now realise, albeit belatedly and only in part—that ‘rule of law’ means, well, exactly that: you don’t get to make up shit that you prefer and pretend the Court is now somehow a crazy right-wing conspiratorial rabbit hole.

Furthermore, a friend (with deep roots to the ‘old’—i.e., pre 2000s—Freedom Party, well-known, and respected among the ‘elder statesmen’ of the 1990s veneer of all political camps, with perhaps the exception being the Greens) told me earlier this week that among his contacts—esp. the right-of-centre—excitement about the anti-mandate protest party-in-the-making (MFG) is rising precisely because their prospective electoral success might ruin the left-of-centre’s chances of obtaining a majority.

I deem my friend highly trustworthy and very well-informed, and I’ve asked for a (virtual) meeting before too long to exchange views. Still, until that moment, here’s my brief take:

The electoral map looks bad for all parties, with the exception of that MFG faction, and it does so for a variety of reasons, including:

• For the Committee of Public Safety, the odds are bad because they are responsible for the Covid-related mismanagement.

• For the ‘systemic’ opposition parties of the centre-left (SPÖ) and left-libertarian garden variety (NEOS), the odds aren’t too good either, because both supported much of the Committee’s lunatic policies.

• For the one consistent ‘systemic’ opposition (FPÖ), this might be an opening, but to many ‘centrist’ voters, the FPÖ has been un-electable, a core tenet that might even hold now, if only for the existence of the somewhat-also-centrist MFG faction.

For the Committee factions, though, an early vote, even if it comes with slight losses—the most recent public polling data I found is from 3-4 weeks ago: both ÖVP and SPÖ were at c. 25%, followed by the FPÖ at 20%, with both Greens and NEOS at around 11%. This is outdated, and I’m quite sure there’s a reason no current polling data is made public right now.

Still, the intra-Committee dynamics—so eloquently listed by Yakari in her comment—are clear: the odds of having an election in (late) spring outweigh the negative tenets for the ÖVP, for the dissolution of parliament—because of expectable Green resistance against torpedoing their own Health Minister and ‘his’ vaccination mandate—is preferable on at least 2-3 counts:

1. The Corruption Hearings will end before they begin (these committees are tied to any legislative session, i.e., the periods between elections), hence there’s at least a chance to control the flow of additional damaging insider information about ÖVP corruption.

2. Going all-in on post-Covid agit-prop would also allow the ÖVP to re-position themselves as ‘we’re opening up, as we’ve always said we’d do as soon as possible’ party, which in turn means lots of political currency to be spent on talking about SPÖ intransigence when it comes to asking for ever-harder mandates in the past (also: the SPÖ-run city-state of Vienna recently re-affirmed that only ‘recovered’ and ‘jabbed’ individuals may patronise restaurants etc., i.e., the SPÖ upheld the infamous 2G rule). Allegations of inconsistency would also apply to the small NEOS faction, but they are also a prospective partner for the ÖVP, hence they may be a bit more muted (and the NEOS were generally less oppressive than everyone except the FPÖ).

3. Finally, the ÖVP turning around and going against Mückstein would also bestow the added benefit of inciting all but civil war among the Greens. Judging from shifts in mass media (esp. in the Green-friendly outlets, such as Der Standard’s comment section) suggests a considerable disillusionment among Green voters who expected ‘more’, esp. ideological purity from their party leadership (oh, the irony).

In other words, we do live in interesting times.