Herbert Kickl, chairman of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party (FPOE) is seen with an election campaign poster for the upcoming Austrian general election on the outskirts of Salzburg, Austria, September 24, 2024. The poster reads “You’re the Boss – I’m your tool”. | Photo credit: Reuters
Austria’s far-right Freedom Party could win its first national election on Sunday (September 29, 2024) tapping into voter anxieties about immigration, inflation, Ukraine and other concerns after making new gains for the hard right elsewhere in Europe.
Herbert Kickl, a former interior minister and longtime campaign strategist who will lead the Freedom Party from 2021, wants to be the new Austrian chancellor. He had used the term “Volkskanzler,” or people’s chancellor, which the Nazis used to describe Adolf Hitler in the 1930s. Kickl has rejected the comparison.
But to become Austria’s new leader, he needs a coalition partner to command a majority in the lower house of parliament.
And winning is not certain, with recent polls showing a close race. He has support for the Freedom Party at 27%, with Chancellor Karl Nehammer’s conservative Austrian People’s Party at 25% and the centre-left Social Democrats at 21%.
More than 6.3 million people aged 16 and over are eligible to vote in the new parliament in Austria, a member of the European Union with a policy of military neutrality.
Mr. Kickl has achieved change since the last parliamentary election in Austria in 2019. In June, the Freedom Party narrowly won the national election for the first time in the European Parliament election, which also brought benefits to other European right-wing parties.
In 2019, his support dropped to 16.2% after a scandal tainted the government of his junior coalition partner. The vice-chancellor and leader of the Freedom Party, Heinz-Christian Strache, resigned after the publication of a secretly recorded video in which he was seen offering help to alleged Russian investors.
The far-right has fueled voter frustration over high inflation, the war in Ukraine and the Covid pandemic. It can also build anxiety about migration.
In its electoral program, the Freedom Party called for “remigration of uninvited foreigners,” and to achieve a more “homogeneous” country by controlling borders and suspending asylum rights through “emergency laws.”
Gernot Bauer, journalist with Austrian magazine Profile who recently published an investigative biography of the far-right leader, said that under the leadership of Kickl, the Freedom Party had moved “even further to the right,” because Kickl refused to categorically alienate the party from the Identitarian Movement, a pan- European nationalist and far-right group.
Bauer described Kickl’s rhetoric as “aggressive” and said some deliberately provocative language.
The Freedom Party also calls for an end to sanctions against Russia, is very critical of western military aid to Ukraine and wants to bow out of the European Sky Shield Initiative, a missile defense project launched by Germany.
The leader of the Social Democrats, the party that led many of Austria’s post-World War II governments, has positioned himself as the polar opposite of Kickl. Andreas Babler has dismissed the government with the far right and labeled Mr. Kickl “a threat to democracy.”
While the Freedom Party has recovered, the popularity of Nehammer’s People’s Party, which currently leads a coalition government with the environmental Greens as its junior partner, has declined since 2019.
During the election campaign, Nehammer described his party, which has implemented immigration in recent years, as a “strong center” that would ensure stability in many crises.
But it is precisely the crisis, from the COVID-19 pandemic to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the rise in energy prices, that has led to conservative support, said Peter Filzmaier, one of Austria’s leading political scientists.
Under his leadership, Austria experienced high inflation averaging 4.2% over the past 12 months, above the EU average.
The government also angered many Austrians in 2022 by becoming the first European country to introduce a coronavirus vaccine mandate, which was canceled a few months later without taking effect. And Nehammer is the third chancellor since the last election, taking office in 2021 after his predecessor Sebastian Kurz – who won in 2019 – quit politics amid a corruption investigation.
But the recent flooding caused by Storm Boris that hit Austria and other countries in Central Europe brought back the topic of the environment to the electoral debate and helped Nehammer narrow the gap with the Freedom Party by presenting himself as a “crisis manager,” Mr. . Filzmaier said.
The People’s Party is the only path on the right to government.
Nehammer has repeatedly ruled out joining a government led by Kickl, describing him as a “security risk” to the country, but has not ruled out a coalition with the Freedom Party, which would have led Kickl to resign from his post in the government.
The chances of Mr. Kickl agreeing to such a deal if he wins the election are slim, Mr. Filzmaier said.
But if the People’s Party finishes first, then a coalition between the People’s Party and the Freedom Party can happen, Filzmaier said. The most likely alternative is a three-way alliance between the People’s Party, the Social Democrats and possibly the liberal Neos.
Published – 29 September 2024 13:00 IST
