“Vaccination and lockdown could have been prevented,” said Gerstorfer on Sunday at a press conference in front of the country house. Too few test and vaccination options, a broken contact tracing, that is the sad result in Upper Austria. This has now led to the Austria-wide lockdown, concludes Gerstorfer: “For us it will always be the Stelzer lockdown, because the difficulties began here.” Since the governor no longer has the situation under control, he must “make room for an independent pandemic expert and crisis manager” in the state government. Eypeltauer also agreed: “Stelzer has made pandemic management a matter for the boss and has crashed at this task.” So both formulated a somewhat complicated request for resignation.
The list of wrong decisions that Gerstorfer and Eypeltauer accuse the governor is long: The fact that the wave could not be foreseen in this violence is “sheer nonsense”, they simply did not prepare. In addition, Stelzer had taken a “politically calculated risk”, staging and party politics were paramount. After the election, the governor looked for the “wrong partner” with the FPÖ and reacted “too late and wrongly”. Gerstorfer and Eypeltauer emphasized that it is now necessary to use the weeks of the lockdown to force vaccination and test offers and get contact tracing to work again. This is exactly what an independent crisis manager should do, but Stelzer no longer trusts the task.
Provincial Councilor Stefan Kaineder (Greens) was not present at the press conference. He shared the criticism, said Kaineder when asked by OÖN, but not the demand for resignation: “Now, in the middle of the wave, is not the right time for it. After that you have to look at everything very carefully.”
“It takes more togetherness and not less,” replied VP Landing Manager Florian Hiegelsberger in a broadcast: “The population expects politics not to keep rubbing against each other, but to fight the virus together.” That is what it should be about now. (eiba)
Source From: Nachrichten
