Various comments in the German press analyse the outcome of the elections in Austria. Writing in the Frankfurter Rundschau (2/10), Norbert Mappes – Niediek observes: “ Despite appearances, there was no shift to the left in Austria. If looked at more carefully, the result contains a different message. A message for the whole of Europe: at least in the smaller countries, people will vote in future for conservative, social and above all national positions. […] The result contains an invitation to the two big parties to form a grand coalition. It’s not a desire justifiable by the Austrians’ need for harmony, still less by the model of Germany. Rather, the citizens of the small member states of the EU are slowly getting used to perceive their government as a shaping force. Half of the decisions that are important for Austria, said Wolfgang Schüssel during the election campaign, are taken in the EU. So it’s logical to consider one’s own government as representative of national interests and to see internal conflicts as an irritating factor of disturbance. It seems that Austria is moving towards a government of national unity“. “ Without any prophetic inclination one can predict that in Vienna too… stagnation will shortly set in“, writes Reinhard Olt in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (5/10). Writing in the Austrian daily Die Presse (02/10), Michael Fleischhacker comments: “ The Austrians have chosen immobility… this electoral result can only be followed by a grand coalition under Social-Democratic leadership . […] In any case, the electorate will see what it voted for: no clear decision, no clear course of action and only the illusion of comfort. Apart from various tactical and contingent reasons for the defeat of the ÖVP – not least, the Chancellor’s party failed due to its tendency to arrogance -, Alfred Gusenbauer won especially for one reason: he gave citizens the impression that in future they would benefit simultaneously from the maximum of security and from the maximum of freedom. Very soon he will have to disappoint them”. “Once synonymous with stagnation, today India is following China at the summit of economic growth” but “its boom conceals an ever greater reality of mass poverty, illiteracy and inequality” , says Kevin Watkins (Director of the UN’s Human Development Report Office) in the British daily THE GUARDIAN (3/10). In spite of the “ abundant ammunition to fuel the globalization euphoria“, he warns, “it is easy to forget the other ‘real India’. This is the country in which 2.8 million children die annually as a result of poor nutrition and easily preventable illness…. Some 300 million Indians survive on less than 50 pence a day”. India, in addition, suffers from “poor public services… a public education system in a parlous state… gender inequality (girls are 50% more likely than their brothers to die before the age of five)”. In Watkins’ view “reforms every bit as bold as those that have transformed the economy” are needed “. “Very instructive”: that’s how Ronnie Convery , writing in the monthly of the Scottish archdiocese of Glasgow, FLOURISH, (October 2006), reacts to the lecture given by Benedict XVI in Regensburg. “Perhaps for the first time – he points out – very liberal voices in Europe, traditionally critical towards the Church”, found themselves “having to defend the Pope, on the grounds of the inalienable right to free expression, and to criticise the minority of Muslims that would like to deny the right to an honest dialogue and in the name of fidelity to Islam are threatening violence”. “But the greatest lesson” for Convery is that “ in an age in which the headlines on one line of a lecture may circulate the whole world before the lecture has even ended… the context [in which it was spoken] no longer counts for anything”. In his editorial in the Italian Catholic daily AVVENIRE (5/10), Davide Rondoni speaks of the “ ill-judged and partisan protests of Islamic fanatics” against the Pope, linked also to the hijacking of a flight from Tirana to Istanbul on 4 October and its re-routing to the Italian airport of Brindisi. Rondoni mentions “the difficult life of Christians in Turkey” and the “ uncomfortable exposure” of Benedict XVI. “Fundamentalists of every kind would like the Pope to become the fifth column for their war” but Benedict XVI “has no intention of doing do”, and in continuing “to call for freedom and the use of reason” leaves them “in disarray“ . “An insult to the intelligence of Muslims” : that’s the title of a reflection by the orchestral conductor Daniel Barenboïm in the French daily LE MONDE (5/10). “By censoring itself – says Barenboïm referring to the cancellation of the performances of Mozart’s opera ‘Idomeneo’ – the Opera House in Berlin has raised the important question of our perception of the Muslim world” and “renounced in advance a dialogue essential for the future of our society”. “Art is neither moral nor immoral”; by this act of censorship “we have deprived many Muslims of the chance to demonstrate their own intellectual maturity” and this “ is, in essence, not all that different from fundamentalism”.
