Kurz affair forces Austria to look in the mirror

 

CARTOON:

First published in NZZ am Sonntag, Switzerland, October 17, 2021 | By Chappatte

 

POSTCARD FROM VIENNA

Kurz affair forces Austria to look in the mirror

 

Despite a string of scandals, efforts to crack down on corruption haven’t gone very far.

 

Sebastian Kurz, during a press conference in April | Joe Klamar/AFP via Getty Images

BY MATTHEW KARNITSCHNIG

October 22, 2021 4:00 am

https://www.politico.eu/article/sebastian-kurz-austria-politics-corruption/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR3Q7qF9hiIVMCpEvYLMVf0dnbomNtJSfNZHJFq_zYjZLb2CdTN6gOoKV7U#Echobox=1634897361

 

VIENNA — Austrians love few things more than a juicy political scandal, which is why the revelations that have rocked the country over the past few weeks are a bit like a White Christmas and the Winter Olympics wrapped into one.

 

Whether at home or at work, in a Viennese coffeehouse or a Tyrolean lodge, chances are high that conversation will begin with the phrase, “Did you hear …”

 

By now, of course, everyone has heard, read and reread the explosive text exchanges between former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and his lieutenants that reveal how they schemed and plotted their way to power in 2017. 

 

Kurz, who denies any criminal wrongdoing, stands accused with nine associates of misusing public money to bribe pollsters and journalists in order to manipulate media coverage in his favor. This week, Vienna has been rife with rumors that someone within Kurz’s inner circle has become a “crown witness.”

 

As with any good scandal, there’s a voyeuristic allure to the Kurz affair. The chats offer the public a rare glimpse behind the curtain of carefully crafted talking points, doublespeak and hidden agendas that characterize the country’s political culture.

 

Of course, it was only two years ago that Austria (and the rest of the world) was treated to a particularly intimate view of how the country’s politics work, courtesy of a surreptitiously filmed visit by the leader of the far-right Freedom Party, Heinz-Christian Strache, to a finca in Ibiza.

 

The scandal — which revolved around Strache’s alleged attempt to sell political favors to a woman he believed represented a powerful Russian — triggered the collapse of Kurz’s first government, though he personally wasn’t implicated and soon returned to power.

 

It was just as Austria was buying popcorn for the highly anticipated dramatization of the Ibiza affair (a miniseries is due to premiere Thursday), that the latest accusations against Kurz emerged.

 

Even as Austrians eagerly take in the latest spectacle, the proximity of the two scandals has forced an uncomfortable question into the country’s collective consciousness: Are we to blame?

 

Stefan Griebl, an Austrian humorist who writes under the pseudonym Franzobel, recently identified a local archetype — the “homo corruptus” — who greases the skids of the system of graft that is rooted in the small town Rathaus with tendrils all the way to the federal chancellery.

 

The steady stream of scandal doesn’t shock the population, Franzobel writes, because locals have become convinced that “humans are capable of anything and Austrians even more.”

 

So when the wife of the finance minister goes for a walk with their baby — and her husband’s laptop — just minutes before the police arrive to search their apartment, as happened last March, the public takes it in stride. And when an assistant to the chancellor has several hard drives professionally shredded – under a false name – Austrians laugh and shrug.

 

Those behind the corruption take comfort in the knowledge that even if they get caught, they have little to fear.

 

“The Austrian is a charming hustler who knows how to twist things in his favor, convinced that it will all be treated as a minor infraction anyway,” Franzobel concluded.

 

If that sounds harsh, consider the register of major political scandals of the recent past: the so-called Eurofighter Affair, which involved up to €100 million in alleged kickbacks connected to the procurement of jets (after more than a decade of investigations, not a single person has been convicted in Austria); Karl-Heinz Grasser, the former finance minister, was recently convicted of accepting bribes in connection with the sale of public housing and sentenced to eight years in prison; meanwhile, prosecutors are still sifting through the wreckage of the politically connected Hypo Alpe-Adria Bank, which collapsed 2014, costing taxpayers nearly €10 billion (yes, billion).

 

Austrians are often at the center of scandals in other countries, too. Both the chief executive and chief operating officer at Wirecard, the German payments firm that collapsed last year due to large-scale financial fraud, are Austrian (Jan Marsalek, the ex-COO, is still on the run). Both men were well connected to Austria’s political elite, including to Kurz’s inner circle.

 

And yet, the country has long been in denial about its culture of corruption, which some say is the legacy of centuries of monarchy, others the result of its Catholic mores. Though most Austrians aren’t corrupt, their tolerance of official graft, whether on a small or large scale, has made them complicit in the system.

 

Austrian regional dialects and slang are full of colorful expressions necessary to navigate the network of cronyism and patronage, such as Freunderlwirtschaft, the practice of one hand washing the other, and Schmatt (a tip) or Maut (a road toll) for bribes. And despite the long history of scandal, efforts to crack down on official corruption haven’t gone very far.

 

Kurz, who sold himself to voters as a fresh-faced do-gooder who would end the old style of crooked politics, is the best example of that quixotic effort. Did Austrians really believe him or just want to be fooled?

 

When the Ibiza scandal hit two years ago, President Alexander Van der Bellen, visibly shocked by the depth of the dirty dealing, declared on live television: “This is not who we are.”

 

The Kurz affair, which has revealed the extent to which much of the country’s media worked hand-in-glove with the government to promote its agenda, is challenging that assertion.

 

“This is who we are,” Horst Pirker, the publisher of News, a magazine, wrote this week. The country’s senior political and media ranks, he concluded, are to a large extent “rotten.”