The head of Oslo’s municipal government has joined the ranks of those who feel the need to offer their versions of how they have handled the Corona crisis. Labour’s Raymond Johansen didn’t always agree with how the Tory-led National Government reacted, but the country and his city weathered the crisis anyway.

Johansen’s new book is even titled Gjennom Krisa (During the crisis), and it was published before another new book on Corona by former Conservative health minister Bent Høie is due out next week. While Høie wanted to write about all the malaise behind the crisis, Johansen clarifies that political leaders should lead and should not always simply follow the advice of professionals.

This can be problematic, but Johansen insisted that the newspaper Klassekampen recently that “some in this society think that there is crisis management that is objectively and technocratically correct, and that it is apolitical. So you should be on your guard.

Johansen also insists that “every decision we make is political, because it is about prioritizing one thing and not another. He primarily criticizes administrative leaders within the state’s health directorate, who often got their way with state government officials, while reporters, according to Johansen, didn’t ask enough questions. reviews. They often criticized officials for not following professional advice, instead of questioning advice that often contributed to loneliness, hit disadvantaged citizens harder and underscored class differences.

Høie has previously said he regrets closing schools for so long, isolating children, restricting their education and leaving them more vulnerable to family problems at home. Johansen also addresses this in his book.

While criticizing many of the decisions made by the former Conservative-led government, he also attacks his own municipal government and its mistakes in his book. In his book co-authored by speechwriter Anders Lundell, Johansen points out that the city did not respond quickly enough to the infection boom after the summer holidays in 2020. The infection had subsided after the spring, and the rapid increase in August surprised his government in Oslo.

His government has also been slow to pass on information to various immigrant groups in Oslo. They ended up being hit hard by the pandemic.

Johansen angered both the state health executive, state health department administrators, and the government when he repeatedly refused to implement the measures they had proposed. He insists he has no regrets.

“We won’t”
The health directorate has asked us to impose a general ban on more than 50 people gathering in a public place,” he said at a press conference in September 2020. “We will not not. He repeated similar refusals to accept state measures.

Johansen, incidentally, also criticized his own Labor Party government for allegedly “overreacting” to infection levels just before the Christmas holidays last year. New Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre essentially shut down most parties at a time when Johansen thought things should open up.

He thought it was understandable that new Omicron variants would cause concern, “but we could quickly see… that people weren’t so sick of Omicron.” He and his city health director, Robert Steen, wanted to reopen Oslo and Norway in early January, “but the people of Norway had to wait until February 12 before the measures were lifted”.

newsinenglish.no/Nina Berglund