Austria’s Kurz seeks to rule solo after dumping nationalists

Bloomberg

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz ended his controversial coalition with the nationalist Freedom Party after a video compromised his junior partner, seeking an early election in a gamble he can govern alone.
Twenty-six hours after Austrian politics was turned upside down by the publication of secretly filmed footage showing his deputy promising government contracts in return for campaign funding, Kurz said that it had become impossible to continue with the nationalists. He is scheduled to discuss a date for the new election and the shape of an interim government with President Alexander Van der Bellen on Sunday in Vienna.
“Enough is enough,” Kurz said in the chancellery. “I want to work for our beautiful country, with the support of a majority of the people but without incidents, accidents and scandals.”
The collapse of the Austrian coalition is a massive defeat for one of the most successful populist parties on the continent, just a week before European Parliament elections in which nationalists from the UK to Poland want to strike a blow against the establishment.
It’s also a sign of Europe’s political fragility as the decline of many mainstream parties makes coalition governments more unstable.
Heinz-Christian Strache resigned as vice chancellor and head of the Freedom Party on Saturday, calling his behaviour exposed in the video “dumb” and “embarrassing.” Yet his bid to rescue the coalition with Kurz’s People’s Party by falling onto his sword failed.
Kurz cited other scandals over the party’s links to far-right groups as well as racist slogans and poems in recent weeks that he’d “swallowed” to keep the government intact until now. The crisis also is a setback for the chancellor’s bid to neutralise the Freedom Party by embracing it.
“He didn’t tame the populist right, but they shot themselves in the foot, as they have always done in the past,” said Thomas Hofer, a political analyst and consultant in Vienna. “It’s a setback for his project that this government fails after less than two years.”
Snap elections can formally be called either by the president, who said that he supports an early vote to restore trust in democracy, or by parliament dissolving itself.
That path will be discussed in Kurz’s meeting with Van der Bellen, as well as whether he plans to govern with the
Freedom Party ministers except Strache or name a new team in the interim. Either way, the earliest timing for elections is mid-August.
High Stakes
Kurz’s bid to go for a government without a partner — a stint Social Democrat Bruno Kreisky last managed in the 1970s and early 1980s — may prove to be a high-stakes gamble. Polls conducted before the scandalous video became public suggested he’d win the most votes, but with about 34 percent support he is significantly short of a margin large enough to stay in power without an ally.
“He’s in the best position to gain some voters from the Freedom Party, but I warn against counting the chicken before they’re hatched,” Hofer said. “There will be a fierce battle because the Freedom Party feels betrayed.”
The People’s Party’s first attempt to govern with the Freedom Party failed in 2002 after two years. The conservatives won an early election at the time but needed a coalition partner to govern.
Next week’s European election will be a first test for Kurz and his rivals.