Far-right
loses in Austria
Liberal
Alexander Van der Bellen wins presidency, beating Freedom Party’s
Norbert Hofer.
By FLORIAN
EDER 12/4/16, 5:47 PM CET Updated 12/5/16, 7:30 AM CET
VIENNA — The
populist winning streak ended in Austria — for a few hours, at
least.
Following Britain’s
vote to leave the EU in June and Donald Trump’s election stunner
last month in America, the victory of Alexander Van der Bellen in
Austria’s presidential vote on Sunday comes as something of a
surprise, even if the former Green party leader had won the same vote
in May, and as a relief to the West’s beleaguered liberals.
Van der Bellen beat
the Freedom Party’s Norbert Hofer with 51.7 percent of the vote,
giving him a lead of more than 100,000 votes, according to Austria’s
interior ministry. This tally doesn’t include postal ballots, which
in May favored Van der Bellen.
Hofer, who was
trying to become the first head of state in Europe from a far-right
party since before World War II, conceded defeat in the late
afternoon, writing on his Facebook page: “I am endlessly sad that
it didn’t work out. I’d have loved to take care of Austria. I
congratulate Alexander Van der Bellen on his success.”
The elections were a
rerun of May’s poll, which Van der Bellen won by a narrower margin
than apparently on Sunday. Following a challenge to the result by the
Freedom Party on technical irregularities in the vote count,
Austria’s highest court ordered a rerun of the election.
Establishment at the
ramparts
Although the polls
were tight ahead of Sunday’s vote, the political establishment not
just in Austria but across Europe braced itself for a potential
double whammy: An unprecedented victory for the far-right in Austria,
and a referendum in Italy the same day that could topple the
government of Matteo Renzi. Italians rejected the referendum, forcing
Renzi to resign and giving a fillip to populist forces there.
Donald Tusk, the
president of the European Council, extended his congratulations to
Van der Bellen. “At a time when we are faced with many difficult
challenges, the continued constructive contribution of Austria to
finding common European solutions and keeping our European unity will
remain essential,” Tusk wrote on Sunday night.
Though analysts
speculated that Trump’s victory in America would make it easier for
Austrians to feel comfortable about backing an anti-establishment
candidate, many voters were worried that a vote for Hofer would hurt
Austria’s reputation abroad, ORF radio reported. The Kronen-Zeitung
tabloid devoted two pages on Saturday to a story that hundreds of
foreign correspondents were accredited to cover the elections on
Sunday.
The dynamics in this
Austrian elections were both uniquely local as well as relevant to
other EU countries. National elections are coming up next year in the
Netherlands, France and Germany, in which anti-establishment,
Euroskeptical parties are expected to do better than ever.
Last year’s
migration crisis fed support for the Freedom Party, a presence on the
Austrian scene since the 1950s, particularly in rural areas. Van der
Bellen, who emerged from a small leftist party, could count on the
support of both the mainstream center-left Social Democrats and the
center-right People’s Party (or ÖVP), their conservative junior
partners in the ruling grand coalition. Both parties failed to get
their candidate through to the final round of the presidential
election.
“We came up
short,” Hofer’s campaign manger Herbert Kickl said at the Freedom
Party’s electoral headquarters on Sunday night. “The
establishment succeeded in blocking change one more time,” he
added, but indicated that “other opportunities” for his party to
take power lay ahead.
The presidency is a
largely ceremonial post in Austria, and elections for parliament are
scheduled for 2018.
Ahead of that vote,
the Social Democrats and the ÖVP have to weigh whether to open
themselves to a possible coalition with the Freedom Party in the
future, or stick with the grand coalition. By denying Hofer the
presidency, which could have prompted earlier parliamentary
elections, Austrian voters have delayed that decision for another two
years. Starting in June 2015, the Freedom Party has broken a tie with
the two mainstream parties and widened its lead in the polls.
‘Abyss of hatred’
The past year’s
aggressive campaigning has left this middle European country of 8
million tired and divided. “All has been said”, wrote Gerold
Riedmann, the editor of regional Vorarlberger Nachrichten. He left
the rest of the column blank.
At a Jesuit church
service on Sunday morning, the priest said in his sermon that Austria
had looked into “the abyss of hatred” and seen “mountains of
innuendos” that, he said, the country needed to overcome.
“I’m as glad as
many Austrians are that the campaign is over, a campaign that has
been fought with hardness and wasn’t always a model,” said
Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern, a Social Democrat.
Urban, liberal
Austria saved Van der Bellen. The electoral map glowed blue, the
color of the Freedom Party, everywhere except in and around bigger
cities such as Vienna, Graz and Salzburg.
Van der Bellen’s
supporters had taken over Vienna with stickers reading “more than
ever, VDB” (it rhymes in German) on almost any possible surface —
even in men’s rooms of the capital’s cafés. Projections on
Sunday gave him almost two thirds of the vote in the capital.
Van der Bellen won
May’s vote by some 30,000, before the courts overturned it citing
irregularities.
Austria’s Interior
Minister Wolfgang Sobotka, who belongs to the ÖVP, told reporters
that “there are no signs of irregularities whatsoever.”
This article was
updated with the results of the Italian constitutional referendum.
Authors:
Florian Eder
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