Covidistan Annals XXVIII: Mückstein Resigned, Most Mandates are Revoked as of 5 March—but it's not yet time to celebrate

Citing 'personal threats' and 'being uncomfortably impacted' by police protection, Mr. Mückstein flees: good riddance. Remember: he was instrumental for the 'house arrest for the unvaccinated'

Two days ago, I notified you about the impending resignation of Covidistan’s Health Minister and wannabe medical tinpot dictator Wolfgang Mückstein. So, in today’s post, I shall try to accomplish a couple of things all at-once, for things are moving very fast these days and there’s so much other stuff to attend to as well:

1. Look at Mückstein’s press statement

2. Inform you about his successor

3. And a brief comment of mine about the likely consequences

We’re in for a wild ride, so buckle up and here we go; also, I haven’t forgotten about Mückstein’s answers to the Constitutional Court’s questions (guidance here), and I shall get to that one, too, but not today.

Q: alright, care to briefly provide me with the key facts about Health Minister Mückstein’s resignation?

Sure, as I mentioned the other day (3 March), around noon multiple media outlets reported that Mr. Mückstein was about to resign (the above picture, which I find very illustrative, is from such a report that appeared in the tabloid Kronen-Zeitung). Citing a variety of issues, Mr. Mückstein met the press at 3:30 p.m. local time, read a brief statement, and left without allowing any questions. You can check out state broadcaster ORF’s summary here, which also includes a video of his resignation announcement.

Q: if I remember correctly, Covidistan’s government has been re-shuffled quite a bit already, wasn’t someone else in charge of the Health Ministry when Covid began?

Correct, the first Health Minister (no name required) was in office a little over a year until April 2021. Similarly citing ‘personal issues’ (read: burn-out and lack of political support), Mr. Mückstein was offered the position due to his party-political connections (he was the president’s GP). So, in short, as the Sars-Cov-2 and Covid-19 affair enters its third year—WHO declared the situation a ‘pandemic’ on 11 March 2020, and on 16 March 2020 a ‘lockdown’ was imposed in Austria (remember these dates, their anniversaries are coming up)—Covidistan now has its third Health Minister in as many years since the last election.

Q: noted the dates, will bring placards for the protests. You mentioned a press briefing, why, pray tell, did he resign?

Well, there’s a fawning recapitulation in Der Standard (who would’ve thought that), compiled by trusted Green party-sympathising pencil pusher Michael Völker. In all, six reasons are cited:

• Personal Dangers: as time went on, Mr. Mückstein claimed that he required police protection due to increasing threats from ‘an increasingly radicalised group of Covid doubters’. While a personal protection detail was assigned to him (and other putschists), Mr. Mückstein said that this experience was very ‘burdensome’ (bedrückend).

• Incompetence: ‘As pandemic manager, Mückstein had to be permanently reachable, and all matters Covid-19 wasn’t the only pressing issue…apparently Mückstein didn’t delegate tasks too often.’ So, basically, the Peter Principle at work, but Mr. Völker, ever the ardent fanboy, tries to spin this and—accidentally?—also mentions a serious lack of leadership qualities.

• Domestic Politicking: on paper, the Health Ministry is in charge of pandemic management; in reality, state governors play the federal government. Völker: ‘Mückstein was frequently kept out of the loop, at times completely, and this must have certainly been frustrating.’

• Qualifications: Mückstein-the-physician may have been way more careful in many situations, but Mückstein-the-politician couldn’t live up, apparently neither to his medical standards nor his political convictions (if there are, indeed, any). Mr. Völker brings up the Injection Mandate, which—and this is partially true—originated with the state governors, but they made Mr. Mückstein take the blame. It’s a very classic, entirely predictable outcome—also, implicitly, acknowledged by Mr. Völker, see Domestic Politicking, above—of how Austro-Covidistan work(ed); in other words: Mr. Mückstein was really bad at politics.

• Lack of Support I: Mr. Völker decries that the Greens’ coalition partner, the People’s Party (ÖVP), sabotaged both Mr. Mückstein and his predecessor; in Mückstein’s case, these shenanigans were even worse as he entered national politics without first going through the motions (rites of passage) by working (brown-nosing) oneself through the lower party ranks.

• Lack of Support II: yet, the Greens, too, failed Mr. Mückstein by not supporting him enough, according to Mr. Völker, Mückstein ‘was often side-lined, wasn’t defended vigorously enough against the ÖVP, and apparently he didn’t receive enough moral support’. Personally, I find this aspect the most hilariously stupid one, but it’s also a kind of gaffe: here, it is admitted that the Greens—who followed their party leader, Vice-Chancellor Werner Kogler, in nominating Mückstein—were never really o.k. with this choice; perhaps the rank-and-file sensed Mückstein’s incompetence and arrogance (i.e., that he would soon turn into an albatross), but the Greens also failed to stop Kogler: Catch-22, I’d say, and self check-mate.

Q: oh wow, and I thought this level of stupidity paired with incompetence and arrogance would only occur in my country…who’s going to follow in Mr. Mückstein’s shoes?

Haha, that’s a good one—Mr. Mückstein will probably be remembered for his affinity for wearing sneakers in office, so I shall do my utmost to ensure he’s going to be remembered because of the infamous law that bears his name.

His successor is one Johannes Rauch, former state minister of environmental and transportation affairs in Vorarlberg (Austria’s smallest state by population). Here’s a piece by ORF that summarises the details: ‘Greens are united for Rauch’, a 62-year-old veteran who had intended to leave politics in 2024. Hence, Mr. Rauch now enters national politics due to his ‘friendship’ to Vice-Chancellor Kogler, which also tells you—actually, re-confirms (see above on how Mückstein was chosen)—how these high offices are awarded in Austro-Covidistan: backroom dealings and ‘friendship’.

Q: what’s your personal take on this development?

Well, I think that new elections were overdue last autumn at the latest, but before I dive into this topic, let’s also remember that most mandates are revoked as of today (5 March; also, keep in mind that this is temporary), which wasn’t supported by Mr. Mückstein. Note that some 40,000 test-confirmed ‘cases’ were recorded on 2 March, injection numbers are in freefall, and the resignation occurred only a few days before the government-appointed expert panel will consider the injection mandate on 8 March.

Remember, as recently as last summer, Mr. Mückstein went on the record stating: ‘I am against mandatory injections. What would that entail? Shall we lock up people? Shall we award high fines? This I can categorically rule out.’ Now, look at how that turned out—I think that the ÖVP (masterfully) took the injection mandate, which emerged among state governors (a majority of them are ÖVP politicos), and made Mr. Mückstein take the fall. Politically, this was a well-executed strike, and now the Greens look quite incompetent, thereby shielding the ÖVP a bit from many other problems (see below).

Furthermore, Mückstein didn’t get anything substantial done. True, 11+ months isn’t a long time, but the time-honoured problem of lack of health care workers (HCW; this one’s a shitshow debate for the last 25+ years) wasn’t even touched by Mückstein. According to Der Standard, Austro-Covidistan will ‘lack 75,000 additional HCW by 2030’, which is another way of saying that the healthcare sector is going to deteriorate quickly in the near term.

Perhaps Mr. Mückstein sensed this all and got out sooner rather than later. True, he’s been warning about the revocation of the mandates, and I do commend his resignation for calling out his ÖVP partners on this one. Still, given all of the above, but there’s a quite apt summary by Der Standard commenter ‘DenkenErlaubt’, which I shall use to illustrate the disillusionment on part of many (former) Green voters and/or sympathisers:

Translation: if [Mückstein] claims that police protection negatively affected his life and that of his family, it’s even worse to contemplate that he had (has) no problem whatsoever to confine more than 1m people to their homes, impact their work life, reduce them to shop for essential foodstuffs only, to socially other them and remove them from public life, thus polarising our society…it’s hard not to see that the Greens aren’t the nice humanitarians they claim to be. This is clearly visible in the actions of [parliamentary leader] Maurer, [environment affairs minister] Gewessler, and Kogler…[justice minister] Zadić remains the only [Green cabinet member] who may be deemed above this and actually works in the interest of the country…they shall all deemed innocent until proven guilty, if needs be!!!

The thing I regret most is that I voted for the Greens, hence I am an accessory in all of this…won’t happen again.

Hope dies last.

Things are moving, at an increasing pace. Let’s see how wide-spread the above sentiment is, but my personal impression is this: more, not less, change is coming, perhaps even a restoration of civic duties and active citizenship.

As to Mr. Mückstein, I wish him well, but I hope he goes very far away, for the substantial infringements, if not outright wanton destruction, of many fundamental rights and liberties hark back to his ill-informed decisions about all matters Covid-19. I have kept the receipts, in particular his ‘answers’ to the Constitutional Court, which I’ll dissect in my next dedicated post.

Don’t weep for Mr. Mückstein and his containment-enamoured ilk, though, for Covid-19 revelaed the emptiness of the left-liberal technocrats. Be angry, but channel your anger into something productive, such as self-government.