Austrian president tasks far-right leader with forming government
The president, a former leader of the left-wing Greens who has frequently clashed with Kickl and has long been critical of the FPO, had few options left to him after the centrists failed to form a coalition, with his announcement on Monday marked a dramatic reversal.
The eurosceptic, Russia-friendly FPO won last September’s parliamentary election with 29 percent of the vote.
The conservative People’s Party (OPP), its only potential partner, will now begin discussions with it, aiming to form a government for the first time since it was established in the 1950s under a leader who was a senior member of Hitler’s elite paramilitary SS.
“I have … tasked him with launching talks with the People’s Party to form a government”, Van der Bellen said in a televised address after meeting Kickl, adding: “I did not take this step lightly”.
“Kickl believes he can find viable solutions … and he wants this responsibility”, Van der Bellen said.
As the 56-year-old Kickl left his meeting with the president, hundreds of protesters, including Jewish students and left-wing activists, booed, whistled, chanted “Nazis out” and waved banners with slogans such as “We don’t want a right-wing extremist Austria”.
Van der Bellen had irritated the FPO by failing to mandate a government formation soon after the election, which had no available coalition partner at the time. That task fell to the OVP and its leader, Chancellor Karl Nehammer. The OVP came second in the election.
Nehammer’s attempts to assemble a three- and then two-party coalition with other centrist parties fell apart this weekend, prompting him to announce his resignation.
OVP open to talks
According to analysts, it’s now very likely that the conservatives will form a coalition led by the far right.
Nehammer had long argued that Kickl, the FPO leader, was a security threat and a conspiracy theorist, was not going to be a leader of his party. With Nehammer gone, so is that red line.
Christian Stocker, his party’s interim leader, announced on Sunday that Kickl would lead coalition discussions with his party.
“We are at the very beginning. The outcome of those discussions is open if we are invited, according to Salzburg state governor and OVP heavyweight Wilfried Haslauer, who was standing next to Stocker as designated party leader, in a press conference.
Should those talks fail, however, a snap election is likely, and opinion polls suggest support for the FPO has only grown since September.
The FPO called for the “remigration of uninvited foreigners” in its election program titled Fortress Austria, which would “create a more “homogeneous” nation by strict border control and a temporary suspension of the right to asylum.
Additionally, it urged that Russia’s sanctions be lifted. The FPO is extremely critical of the United States’ military support for Ukraine, and it wants to withdraw from Germany’s European Sky Shield Initiative.
Kickl has criticized “elites” in Brussels and demanded that some powers be returned to Austria after leaving the EU.
Source: Aljazeera
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