TIROLER TAGESZEITUNG "Editorial" edition of Tuesday, June 27, 2023, by Anita Heubacher: "What remains is a crisis of confidence"

2023-06-26 23:20:10

Innsbruck (OTS) – The last Corona regulations expire at the end of June, it is the official end of the pandemic. This has shaken trust in politics, the media, science and society. What was missing in the pandemic was dialogue.

Indexes and, as one example of many, the Crisis Security Act show how much trust in the federal government in Austria has suffered. Named benevolently by the ÖVP and the Greens, it was overwhelmed by negative comments. The federal government wanted to make Austria more crisis-proof, but the announcement that it wanted to decide with a simple majority when there was a crisis and when it wasn’t aroused suspicion. And the intention formulated in the law that the federal government could use the army to take individual precautionary measures in the event of a crisis made the alliance of opponents even bigger. Comparisons with Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán have been raised. Last week, the opposition, whose role in the pandemic could not have been more different, united and denied the federal government the two-thirds majority it would have needed in the National Council for the law.
Governments and politics as such are not the only ones who have lost credibility. Media and science can join the ranks, and even people’s trust in one another, which is the basic prerequisite for a prosperous social coexistence in general, has suffered. All professional disciplines agree that the corona pandemic was viewed too undifferentiated in most cases. Critics were quickly muzzled, in every profession. From teachers to lawyers. The lack of dialogue meant that the fronts hardened, the critics became louder and sometimes more extreme in order to be heard in the majority opinion. This has caused lasting damage to our society and our political system.
The Corona crisis may now be officially over, but the crisis of confidence will keep us busy for a long time and, if not treated properly, will become chronic. The desire to stop talking about the pandemic is understandable. After all, everyone has to look into themselves and ask themselves what role they played in the collective state of emergency and how satisfied they can be with it.
Our society urgently needs to find its way back to dialogue, to a change of perspective. To look at a situation through the eyes of the other person and to exchange ideas. Anything that contributes to this, in whatever discipline, is more than desirable, has to be brought about and is the foundation of a functioning democracy.