Long before the results of parliamentary elections in Austria were officially announced late at night on October 19, the international media were unanimous: what everybody had feared would happen in Holland, France or Germany had finally come about in Austria: a massive, scary shift to the right. The Green Party obliterated, the erstwhile proud Social Democrats almost overtaken by the Freedom Party – a hotchpotch of racists, xenophobes, euro-haters and anti-Semites – with the conservative People’s Party, which had triggered the snap elections, as the winner.
A comprehensible verdict. Only this is not what had happened. Core voters, an admittedly melting part of the electorate, hardly budged. The outcome – 31.5 per cent conservatives (ÖVP), 26.9 per cent Labour (SPÖ), 25.9 per cent nationalists (FPÖ) – was the result of a remarkable mobilisation of none-voters, the implosion of two parties (‘Team Stronach’, Greens) and the improbable win of a single-man party, Peter Pilz. Voter participation, at a remarkable 80 per cent, decisively refuted the perceived wisdom of democracy weariness. Voters did not choose from vastly different political programmes, there weren’t any, they chose the most plausible lead candidate.
Sebastian Kurz, 31, leader of the conservatives, young, handsome, managed to display a steely decisiveness. He grabbed power in his own party in a ruthless manner, demanding total submission from party grandees. He distanced himself from the nationalists while acknowledging the problems of the refugee crisis and he stayed on top of political rivals who were almost twice his age.
By changing the traditional black colour of the ÖVP to turquoise, Kurz made a party which had been in existence since 1945 all of a sudden look young again – despite the fact that it had ruled Austria on and off for more than 70 years and that it had been part of the last coalition government so thoroughly despised by voters for its ineffectiveness.
As always, societal changes do not happen in the voting booth. They are glacial, often subterranean. And they do not always manifest themselves in polling results. The rise of Austria’s Freedom Party preceded the refugee drama, usually blamed for the rising disenchantment of the electorate, by decades, and socialist values like solidarity, workers’ rights or internationalism have lost their meaning long ago. The UK’s Labour party is led by a Eurosceptic; Alexis Tsipras, the feared left-wing firebrand, happily signs up to austerity and shakes hands with Trump; leading politicians from the left all over Europe can’t wait to earn millions in the private sector; and the socialist core voter, the worker, has transformed into a zero-hour-contract, gig-economy ‘entrepreneur’ and became part of an increasingly poor middle class, the ‘99 per cent’ stuck without much of a future.
Kurz, an exceptionally talented politician, will have to prove now that he has the team and the ideas worth voting for
It is therefore increasingly difficult to pin down what is left and what constitutes the right. Was Brexit a move to the right? Was the improbable election victory of Donald Trump a massive tilt to the right? (Or do we witness an anarchist dismantling US and international institutions?) Is French President Emmanuel Macron a conservative?
Kurz, Austria’s next Chancellor (Prime Minister) and thereby Europe’s youngest head of government, will to the dismay of many form a coalition government with the Freedom party. His party alone could not muster enough votes to secure a majority – a state of affairs for all Austrian parties for the foreseeable future.
Does this make him a right-wing fascist in disguise? I do not think so. Kurz is a fervent European, he believes in cooperation on a European level, he rejects the anti-Islamism of his future partners in government, while pointing at rising anti-Semitism which comes with imported political Islam. Russian news outlets, celebrating him as “our Kurz” may be in for a surprise. Just because he questions the usefulness of sanctions does not make him less supportive of the Minsk Process. He looks with raised eyebrows at the cooperation agreement which the Freedom Party has signed with AdF, Le Pen and Putin’s United Russia. The glee in the Russian press that a “Nazi party”, hence inherently anti-Russian, praises the annexation of Crimea as the FPÖ does, makes Kurz frown.
When Kurz’s party had in the noughties formed a coalition government with the nationalists – the ‘Haider-party’ – for the first time, the country was threatened with sanctions by the EU. This will not happen this time around.
Political leadership in Poland, Hungary and Slovakia looks so worrisomely illiberal now that the FPÖ, always keen to hook up with them if they only could, seems the lesser problem. This first coalition with the ‘enemy’ ended with the near obliteration of the FPÖ. Voters realised that once in government they had become undistinguishable from the politicians they themselves had so colourfully vilified while in eternal Opposition: the same office-hunting, the same corruption, the same ineptitude – just less manpower. At the next elections they were once again reduced to a fringe party.
Will Kurz achieve the same? Much will depend on coalition talks now. As a major party, the FPÖ can rightly claim a string of ministries for themselves. If they occupied positions in the Home Office, Foreign Affairs and Culture for instance, Austria might be shaped out of recognition.
Their leader, Hans Christian Strache, has somewhat mellowed during the election campaign though, reflecting his desire to govern and to mollify the many more moderates who had voted for him this time. If Kurz can muster the same decisiveness which had won him this election, he could successfully expose the incompetence of his partners or at least avoid embarrassment on an international stage. If this will be enough to reduce them at the next elections remains to be seen. A good, functioning government may be helpful for both Kurz and Strache the next time Austrians will cast their vote.
Like everywhere, the Austrian electorate is observing the political reality in their country with growing exasperation. Instead of being offered possible solutions for growing pension deficits, a deteriorating health system or inadequate education, instead of being presented with a vision of a modern, effective and just government, the voters had to put up with hackling politicians, unwilling and incapable of broadly engaging with the electorate while they were busy securing jobs for their mates and themselves.
Austrians who had welcomed refugees with open arms had to realise, for instance, that their political representatives had hardly any idea how to make integration possible. They saw politicians defaming each other instead of presenting a convincing team of experts with a working programme to propel the country. Kurz, an exceptionally talented politician, will have to prove now that he has the team and the ideas worth voting for. So far he has found little time to develop them.