Politics

As I have written before, I am not going to share my political opinion, but that doesn’t prevent me from writing about politics. :)

Sadly in Austria, our political situation isn’t as good as it was. I think we are currently in a crisis that searches for its sibling.

Corruption, “fake news”, “real news” and some scandals.

In my opinion, it all started with a young man of the ÖVP. He basically reformed the whole party to prevent it from losing more voters. He did it radically and change the party from the ground up. Of course, they won the election. Together with the second-largest party (FPÖ) they formed a coalition.

And now to the breaking point, the coalition of them put Austria in a more right-oriented fashion. The FPÖ is known for nationalism and some of the people involved in the party are qualified as extremes.

Well, if people choose to be more right, that’s what the people want. But the campaigning from both parties wasn’t like it should be. The FPÖ and ÖVP both used the refugee crisis and the problems with it to position itself in a way that they seemed to be the “cure” for the crisis.

A few months ago the whole construction crashed. A video from the Vice Federal Chancellor was published by the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”.

It wasn’t a private porn video, it was worse. Recorded a few years ago in Ibiza.

It showed the then Vice Federal Chancellor (H.C. Strache, FPÖ) talking with a “Russian oligarch niece” about vote manipulation. Not directly vote manipulation, but ways to manipulate the people of the country.

The whole thing was a hoax by the people who filmed the video, but H.C. Strache didn’t know, they were filmed.

Of course, he immediately announced his resignation. But they also claimed that the ÖVP would do the same.

Later the whole thing was discussed inside the parliment. Even though Sebastian Kurz (then Federal Chancellor, ÖVP) did all to prevent it, the oposition declared they wouldn’t trust the current government anymore.

That led to a state without a working government. Luckily it isn’t as bad as when the government of the US shuts down, but if I remember correctly something bad as that didn’t happen before in Austria.

The federal President had to create a “government of experts” which had to take over the day-to-day business of the government.

And now, at the end of September, we (the people of Austria) are called to vote again.

Another thing that happened last week was that a weekly newspaper published reports from the ÖVP’s finances. It showed they broke the campaing budget that is enforced by law in Austria (7 million Euro).

And, if the files aren’t lying, they did it on purpose and even budgeted the potential penalty they could face.

Now, we have two parties breaking the law. People that make laws are breaking them.

I really love this country, it’s health and education system, but sometimes I feel like I’m in the wrong movie.