The criticism of the flight of the Chancellor and the Federal Minister of Economics without a mask is so exaggerated that it borders on hypocrisy. A government flight is not a scheduled flight or a bus ride through Berlin. Nevertheless, the two top politicians have done their parties a disservice.
“Stupid is he who does stupid things,” movie character Forrest Gump used to quote his mother. Seen in this light, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his deputy Robert Habeck did not give a good picture when they were photographed without a mask on the government plane on the way to Canada. Top politicians who demand prudence, voluntary restrictions and compliance with the rules when dealing with the pandemic should better not give the impression of hypocrisy, but set a good example themselves. Everything else immediately falls on government representatives’ feet, as the calls for an end to the obligation to wear masks on airplanes – especially from the coalition partner FDP – show.
SPD General Secretary Kevin Kühnert immediately tried to capture the topic in an interview with ntv: “If everyone on the holiday plane has to wear it and not in the government, then that causes a form of resentment,” he said in “Frühstart”. The demonstrative insight into the overflowing soul of the people is to be understood above all as the shrewd political strategist giving in: He does not even attempt to explain to the people that the chancellor’s waiver of masks in no way means that he considers the mask requirement on public transport to be dispensable. But that’s exactly how it is: Scholz is in favor of the mask requirement in the means of transport used by the general public. And a regular bus is not a government plane.
Every passenger must be able to feel safe on scheduled flights, trains and local public transport, even if many fellow passengers do not test themselves regularly according to general experience. Most people are simply dependent on these means of transport, privately and professionally. It’s not (only) about the mask’s contribution to containing the pandemic, but about not excluding vulnerable groups and people who are afraid of the corona virus from public life. Whoever wears the mask shows consideration for these groups. A state that obliges you to wear a mask takes care of the weakest – the old and the previously ill. In this sense, a mask requirement in retail and in closed rooms at the workplace would also make sense.
However, there is currently no mask requirement in the workplace and politicians and journalists are behaving like the rest of the working population: if they agree to take off the mask in closed rooms because everyone involved has taken precautions or is not afraid of infection, they are allowed to do so do. This also applies – morally speaking – to the government plane, where everyone was there to work, but nobody was on it because they had no other choice. Anyone who condemns this laxity, castigates it as double standards or even recognizes a violation of the rules is ignoring reality. In the Luftwaffe machines, the only recommendation was to wear a mask. It is unclear whether the Air Force’s readiness to fly was allowed to independently determine that the mask requirement does not apply to them. In any case, all passengers were freshly PCR-tested and the travelers behaved like all other citizens, even if there is no explicit mask requirement: some took them off, some left them on. As everyone outside the Berlin bubble now knows, Scholz, Habeck and the media representatives are not saints when it comes to dealing with Corona.
But they weren’t particularly clairvoyant either. Scholz and Habeck, who are the largest possible top representatives of the SPD and Greens, did their parties a disservice with their laziness. After all, the two larger coalition partners are struggling with the smaller governing party, the FDP, about the corona measures for the fall. Then the mask requirement on planes and trains should be handled even more strictly. Anyone who wants to impose health protection on their citizens in such a way, for which there are good reasons, should also set a good example in voluntary situations. The chancellor and his deputy should have done that once.
Especially since the pictures were probably not planned: According to information from ntv, the background discussion between the chancellor or minister and the journalists flying with him, which is usual on such government trips, should not have been filmed or photographed at all. When it came to that, government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit did not intervene. A big parallel to the dispute over the Holocaust-relativizing statements by Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas in the Chancellery: Hebestreit had announced the end of the press conference even before Scholz could reply to his guest. Scholz was then accused of not immediately condemning Abbas’ statements.
There is just as little doubt about Scholz’s attitude towards the Holocaust and German-Israeli relations as there is about his fundamental adherence to the rules when dealing with Corona. The fact that in the case of the mask he nevertheless only risked the impression of double standards – ‘down there, like up here’ – was political stupidity, a throw-through for political opponents and an excitement that distracts from more important debates. With a view to the rules in force on the government plane and the all too human comfort of this travel company, it wasn’t a scandal either. Except, of course, for those who want to capitalize on it – be it headlines or gaining political space.