Deputy Parliament Speaker Zeljko Reiner of the ruling HDZ party said on Tuesday that the Opposition was manipulating the fact that scientists had different opinions and was playing politics with that.
He went on to say that today “the left and the right have formed a nice unity to attack the government in an attempt to show that it is badly managing the health crisis.”
“Once again we have seen that an odd symbiosis between parties that have different ideologies. Some are allegedly very right and some very left but they all agree in the attack, playing politics with the difference of opinion between scientists in an effort to prove that the government is underperforming and badly managing the health crisis,” Reiner said commenting on dissenting opinions in the government’s scientific advisory council.
Politics is manipulating with the dissenting opinions of scientists for its own purposes, said Reiner.
He added that the advisory council provides advice but the government makes the decisions.
“Science is a basis of many decisions but it is not the only one. The government led by the prime minister is responsible for making the best decisions for the country and for all segments, not just health but for the economy, psychology, sociology and others too,” he said.
“If we were to only take science into consideration, I would, for example, be of the opinion that we need to go into lockdown and to sit at home for three months and the epidemic would go away. The virus will disappear but what would happen to the state in three months’ time. Where would our wages come from? Who would work in production? These matters are not black and white and the decision is always up to the government,” said Reiner.
Ivan Celic of the HDZ added that the statements made by the Opposition “are a sheer act of transposing science into the political domain, which has some repercussions.”
MP Celic underscores that apart from the scientific aspect, there is a wider social and political context, and it is up to the government to assume responsibility in decision-making when it come to more or less restrictive measures to rub COVID-19.
