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Vienna / AFP
Austria’s government was licking its wounds on Monday after the anti-immigration far-right triumphed in presidential elections, in a debacle of historic proportions for a cosy political establishment seen as out of touch and ineffectual.
According to preliminary results, Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party (FPOe) came a clear first with 36 percent of the vote in the first round of elections for the largely, but not entirely, ceremonial post of head of state.
Candidates from the two ruling centrist parties, which have effectively run Austria since the end of World War II, failed to even make it into a runoff on May 22, coming fourth and fifth with 11 percent each.
The result means that for the first time since 1945, Austria will not have a president backed by either Chancellor Werner Faymann’s Social Democrats (SPOe) or their centre-right coalition partners, the People’s Party (OeVP).
Having a president in the Habsburg dynasty’s former palace in Vienna not from either of the two main parties could shake up the traditionally staid and consensus-driven world of Austrian politics.
“This is the beginning of a new political era,” FPOe leader Heinz-Christian Strache said after what constituted the best-ever result at federal level for the former party of the late JoergHaider, calling it a “historic result”.
The Oesterreich tabloid described Hofer’s victory as a “tsunami that has turned our political landscape upside down.”
Hofer is a “a kind, nice protest politician who wraps the FPOe’s brutal declarations against refugees in soft language.”
Faymann said on Sunday the result was a “clear warning to the government that we have to work together more strongly”. He said however that his party would not make any personnel changes—including with regard to his own position.