Austrian
far-right party's triumph in presidential poll could spell turmoil
Freedom
party’s Norbert Hofer, who won 36% of vote, has threatened to
dissolve parliament before 2018 elections
Philip Oltermann
Monday 25 April 2016
16.12 BST
Austria is braced
for political turmoil with fears that the landslide victory for a
rightwing populist and gun-carrying candidate in Sunday’s
first-round presidential vote could trigger snap elections.
Norbert Hofer, of
the rightwing Freedom party (FPÖ), defied pollsters’ predictions
to beat the Green party’s Alexander Van der Bellen into second
place, gaining 36% of the vote. The two candidates will go head to
head in a run-off ballot on 22 May.
While the
presidential post is mainly a ceremonial role, Hofer has threatened
to make use of a right to dissolve parliament before the 2018
elections, warning other candidates in a TV debate that “you will
be surprised by what can be done [by a president]”.
Hofer, a youthful
45-year-old who is partially paralysed after a paragliding accident,
has campaigned for disability rights and is seen as having lent a
friendly face to a party that balances virulently anti-immigration
and Eurosceptic messages with leftist stances on welfare issues, led
by firebrand Heinz-Christian Strache.
Hofer, who claims to
protect himself in the “uncertain times” of the refugee crisis by
carrying a Glock gun, scored overwhelming victories in all of
Austria’s states apart from Vienna. In Styria, Burgenland and
Carinthia – border states most affected by the refugee trail from
the Mediterranean to central Europe – Hofer managed to gain 40% or
more.
Some constitutional
experts question whether Austria’s president would be able to
dissolve parliament without the orders of the government, though
since the presidential role has previously only ever been filled by
politicians from the two main centrist parties, the situation is
without precedent.
On Sunday night,
while describing the result as a “rendezvous with history”, Hofer
made clear that he regarded the result as an “intermediary step”
on the way to a wider challenge to Austria’s political system.
The FPÖ is also
leading polls for the parliamentary elections, with about 30% of the
vote.
Should the FPÖ
manage to return to government, it would ring alarm bells across the
continent, with Austria joining a growing bloc of countries led by
authoritarian and Eurosceptic governments , which includes Hungary
and Poland. Hofer has signalled he would refuse to sign the
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement with the US
even if it was passed by his government.
Sunday’s result
was welcomed by far-right politicians across Europe, including Geert
Wilders in the Netherlands and France’s Marine Le Pen, as well as
politicians from Italy’s Lega Nord and Germany’s National
Democratic party. Italy’s prime minister, Matteo Renzi, warned that
the result could have consequences for the border region between
Austria and Italy. “It would be a problem for Europe if the Brenner
pass would be closed,” he said.
Whatever the outcome
on 22 May, it will be the first time since 1945 that the country’s
president has not come from the two centrist parties, the Social
Democrats (SPÖ) and the People’s party (ÖVP), who barely managed
to scramble together a quarter of the vote.
Second-placed Van
der Bellen is an outsider candidate in his own right who ran for
office without the official endorsement of the Green party and has
criticised the Austrian government’s cap on asylum seekers. The
72-year-old veteran will now hope for endorsements from the
mainstream parties to block Hofer’s rise to power.
Johannes Pollak, a
political scientist at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Vienna,
said Van der Bellen was a marginal favourite to win. “The
established parties will do their best to stop a rightwing populist
from coming to power. But after this political earthquake, it is hard
to make a certain prognosis.”
Reinhard Heinisch,
professor of political science at Salzburg University, said the
momentum was on the side of the rightwing candidate. “Especially if
the FPÖ manages to frame the next round of the election around a
polarising issues – for or against refugees, for example – the
establishment parties face an uphill battle,” he said.
“On the surface,
the situation may look similar to that in the US, but in America even
the leftwing candidate Bernie Sanders has embraced a reformist
agenda. In Austria, only the right has spelled this out.”
Columnist Gerfried
Sperl in Der Standard wrote: “A weakening of the parliament, an end
to the division of powers, opposition to Brussels and a curtailing of
the freedom of press: Vienna would not only be geographically located
east of Prague, but politically too.”
Moshe Kantor,
president of the European Jewish Congress, described the Freedom
party’s rise as “deeply troubling”. “That a country at the
heart of Europe can show such support to the far right barely 70
years on from the Holocaust shows that our collective memories are
failing,” he said.
Austria’s Social
Democrat prime minister, Werner Faymann, who faced calls to resign
after the vote, said the result was a “clear signal to the
government that we have to cooperate more strongly”.
But many
commentators say the crisis of the political establishment in Austria
has much to do with the fact that the two centrist parties have
governed the country in a “grand coalition” for the past 10
years.
“The message for
SPÖ and ÖVP is simple: your time is up,” Viennese daily Die
Presse commented. “After this Sunday we know for good: voting
patterns in this country have radically changed. At least half of all
votes are up for grabs and have nothing to do with factions and
alliances. The candidates or groups that win are the ones who offer
solutions, or at least pretend to offer them, or at least provide the
right characters at the right time.”
Some critics say the
Austrian government lost its credibility during the refugee crisis.
After initially supporting the German chancellor, Angela Merkel’s
open-border stance last October, the coalition government and in
particular the conservative foreign minister, Sebastian Kurz, emerged
as key drivers behind the closure of the Balkan route earlier this
year.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário