Six months after a hotly contested presidential election was voided after evidence was found confirming “widespread” voting fraud, Austrians returned to the polls on Sunday in a bitterly fought election re-run which could see the European Union’s first “far-right president” and boost the anti-establishment tide sweeping many countries.
Austrian presidential candidates Van der Bellen (left) and Norbert Hofer (right)
Norbert Hofer of the anti-immigrant Freedom Party (FPOe) said he felt “calm and optimistic” as he cast his ballot in his hometown of Pinkafeld, 100 kilometres south of Vienna. Hofer, 45, hopes to emerge victorious after he narrowly lost to Greens-backed independent candidate Alexander Van der Bellen in a first run-off in May, which was annulled over ballot count breaches.
Opinion polls indicate the candidates are neck-and-neck in a tense race described as “day of reckoning” by Austrian media.
As AFP reports, boosted by Brexit and Donald Trump’s shock US election win, smooth-tongued gun enthusiast Hofer has vowed to “get rid of the dusty establishment”, seek closer ties with Russia and fight against “Brussels centralising power”. “This vote will be a sign of the mood in Europe,” Viennese voter Gerhard told AFP, bracing icy temperatures to cast his ballot.
Needless to say, should Norbert be elected, the mood in Brussels, if not so much Europe, will be quite dour. Although Austria’s presidency is largely ceremonial, EU leaders fear a win for Hofer would trigger a domino effect with key elections next year in France, Germany and The Netherlands. Populist groups across Europe, on the right and the left, have benefited from a growing sense of unease about globalisation, multiculturalism, rising inequality, and austerity cuts.
“Much success today, Norbert,” tweeted the FPOe’s Dutch ally Geert Wilders, whose anti-Islam party is leading opinion polls ahead of a general election in March.
As reported before, the Austrian vote will be announced just hours ahead the conclusion of a high-stakes referendum in Italy, which could bring about the resignation of its prime minister and renew chaos in a bloc already weakened by Britain’s shock vote in June to quit the EU.
Terrified of the ongoing overhaul against the status quo, the Financial Times wrote recently that “nationwide votes in Austria and Italy on December 4 are causing palpable anxiety in Europe that… this will be the day when the sky starts falling.” Incidentally, here is a list of the FT’s predictions for 2016 from December 31, 2015:
The FT’s predictions for 2016:
– Clinton will beat Ted Cruz
– UK will vote to stay in EU
– Merkel will lose her job https://t.co/eCUTjff6vC— Gergely Polner (@eurocrat) December 4, 2016
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6.4 million Austrians are eligible to vote, and exit polls are expected shortly after voting ends at 1600 GMT, in less than an hour. If the race is too close to call, the winner will not be known until Monday when the postal vote count is tallied.
One can hope that unlike May, this time there won’t be postal vote fraud: back in May, this is what swung the ballot in favour of ex-Greens party chief Van der Bellen, 72, who beat his rival by just 31,000 votes. LHofer’s lawyers showed irregularities in the way some of the roughly 4.5 million ballots were counted, leading to today’s vote re-run.
Today’s repeat vote ends an ugly 11-month campaign which saw Hofer posters being defaced with Hitler moustaches and Van der Bellen’s with dog excrement. “The new president has to unify the country, this long election has polarised society,” voter Katharina Gayer told AFP in Vienna.
Amid growing voter fatigue, Van der Bellen has urged people to choose “reason, not extremes” while Hofer vowed to keep Austria “safe”. The far-right hopeful has largely avoided inflammatory rhetoric, instead tapping into public anxieties about record immigration and rising unemployment.
His polished style saw him triumph in a first round in April, sensationally knocking out candidates from the two main centrist parties that have dominated Austrian politics since 1945. Disillusioned voters are “flocking to populist movements and the easy answers they offer,” political analyst Thomas Hofer (no relation) told AFP.
“We want to be part of the EU but not to lose our identity,” voter Helwig Leibinger told AFP at Hofer’s final rally in Vienna on Friday. “We want a commander-in-chief of the armed forces who can give the right orders.”
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As Bloomberg adds, whether or not Hofer manages to defeat Alexander Van der Bellen of the Green Party in Austria, the country is heading for its first president in seven decades who isn’t from either the Social Democrats or the People’s Party.
Both candidates have promised to wield the power of the presidency more aggressively. Hofer, 45, has promised to dismiss governments he deems incapable of passing legislation. Van der Bellen, 72, has pledged to block anti-EU forces from governing. Hofer also wants to trigger new national elections. “The incentive for Hofer to dissolve the National Council if he wins the Presidential election is clear,” JP Morgan economist David Mackie said in a note. “The Freedom Party looks likely to do much better if an election were to be held now, as it is currently polling well ahead of the other two parties.”
Still, what a Hofer victory might mean is not exactly unclear. He wants more Swiss-style direct democracy, including a referendum on Austria’s EU membership if Turkey joins or the bloc becomes more centralised. Hitherto unused presidential powers could, in theory, allow Hofer to fire the coalition government.
More realistically his victory might prompt the main parties to pull the plug on their unhappy union and call fresh elections, benefiting the poll-leading FPOe. In 2000, over 150,000 people marched in Vienna against the FPOe after it entered a coalition with the conservative People’s Party. But observers say the far-right’s rise may not trigger the same backlash now that populists are gaining ground across the continent.
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