Erstellt am: 6. 9. 2012 - 13:30 Uhr

Time to put the skeletons back in the cupboard

Reality Check: Eric Frey on why it might be in everyone's interests for the Parliamentary Enquiry into corruption to end soon, and assessing fairness at the Paralympics

A special meeting of the Parliamentary Investigation into Corruption broke up this morning without reaching any conclusions. Technical procedural details are threatening to de-rail the long and complicated process that has been airing huge amounts of parliamentary dirty laundry and digging skeletons out of cupboards since January.

To be sure, the investigation has brought an alarming amount of corruption to light, and it spreads far and wide without limitation to any particular departments of parties. From that point of view it has already been a great success in creating an urgent demand for greater transparency.

However, that isn't without its associated risks. With elections looming next year a disaffected public, seeing how dirty mainstream politics are, may well look to more extreme, or even non-political alternatives - that's if they go out to vote at all.

It's not often that the SPÖ and ÖVP agree, but they are united in feeling that the sooner the investigation is brought to a close, or just fizzles out, the better,

Political commentator, Eric Frey of Der Standard, gives his analysis investigation and the current situation.

The Paralympics and finding fairness

It's been a great Paralympics for Austria. 10 medals so far, and still a few days to go.

But trying to set a level playing field, so to speak, for disabled athletes is no mean task. As the available technology improves, so do the advantages one athlete may have over another. The debate over running blades is bubbling up again, with many competitors calling for a change in the rules.

As if managing that weren't hard enough, assessing intellectual disability is even more fraught with problems. At what level does intellectual disability impair athletic performance, and how is performance affected? These are questions researchers and Paralympic officials have been wrestling with since the victorious Spanish intellectually handicapped basketball players at the Athens Paralympics were found to be of normal intelligence and mental function. Competitions for the intellectually disabled were suspended, and have only now been re-introduced in London.

Riem Higazi spoke to Nick Parr of the British charity, Mencap, about why this has been such a difficult issue to resolve.

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