Kuwait Times

Published Date: September 30, 2008
By Philippe Schwab

Disenchanted young and working class voters fuelled the surge of Austria's far-right parties in the weekend elections, provoking a political earthquake by punishing both the mainstream left and right, analysts said yesterday. The Freedom Party and the Alliance for Austria's Future, seizing on voters angered by the failed coalition of Social Democrats and conservatives, took nearly one-third of the votes in Sunday's general elections.

The Social Democrats (SPOe) and the conservative OeVP, still finished first and second, respectively, but posted the worst results in their histories in an election dubbed the "great shake-up" by the daily Die Presse. "It's very simple: voters protested against the paltry performance of the partners in the former 'grand' coalition," said political analyst Peter Hofer.

The coalition collapsed in July after 18 months of stalemate, leading to the snap elections. "Austrians were furious to a rare extent and they voted full of anger," said a Standard newspaper editorial. The SPOe fell under the 30 percent mark for the first time ever, with 29.7 percent of the vote, while the OeVP picked up 25.6 percent of the ballots, a nearly nine-point drop from its score in the 2006 elections. The far-right's Freedom Party, led by Heinz-Christian Strache, took third place with 18 percent-
a seven-point rise from 2006 - while the Alliance headed by Jorg Haider nearly tripled its result from two years ago with 11 percent.

The radical right's two leaders are known for their populist rhetoric and anti-immigration stance, both having vowed to defend the rights of "true Austrians." They have warned against the "Islamification" of society, posing as the defenders of low-income families, democratic freedoms and Austrian neutrality. But for this election, they wooed voters concerned with their wallets by focusing on concerns with the high cost of living and unemployment amid the global financial crisis, analysts said. "They put th
eir xenophobic rhetoric on the back burner to favor social issues, which became the main concern of voters," said University of Vienna political analyst Emmerich Talos.

The far-right also made inroads with young and working-class voters. Strache, a youthful 39-year-old dental technician who seems comfortable in clubs as well as in blue-collar neighborhoods, captured one quarter of the under-30 vote. Known as HC or as Stra-Che, after the Argentine communist revolutionary Che Guevara, Strache "represents a fresh wind and injects youth in a rather dull Austrian political scene, and this was welcomed by young voters," Talos said. He also chipped away at the Social Democrats'
domination of the working-class vote, winning one-third of that segment.

For his part, Haider leaned towards the centre. "Jorg Haider has put on the costume of a moderate and responsible leader who points to his achievements as governor of Carinthia province," Talos said. Haider provoked a storm of controversy in Europe in 2000 when the Freedom Party, which he led at the time, entered the government alongside the conservative People's Party, leading to an EU boycott of Austria. But analysts yesterday did not rule out another coalition of right and far-right, although Haider and
Stracher, who cordially detest each other, were not expected both to join a new government. - AFP