The 2012 Austrian Election Interlude: The rise of Frank Stronach and more ...

[Tender Branson]

I think you should start a new thread for those as it's no longer 2011.

Problem is that there won't be an election in Austria until Sept. 2013, so how should I name this thread ?

"Austrian Political News 2011-2013"

?

And, the Salzburg personal  ratings seem okay for the SPÖ. Am I correct?

Yeah, Gov. Burgstaller (SPÖ) is still the most popular politician here and the polls don't mean a lot right now. Even before the 2009 elections polls showed a close race between SPÖ and ÖVP, yet the SPÖ won on election day. The ÖVP changed a couple persons recently who retired and those are also quite popular. Maybe that's what caused the ÖVP to overtake the SPÖ. The Greens could have gained ground at the expense of the SPÖ, because they just entered a SPÖ-Green coalition in Vienna. But I wouldn't read too much into it, there's a 5% margin of error.

[Tender Branson]

I have not seen a political poll for Austria in about 1 month now.

Here´s some other news instead:

There have been 47 (completed) homicides in Austria last year, of which 44 have been solved.



There were another 85 (attempted) homicides. About 95% of these were solved.

In Vienna 18 murders took place, all of which were solved.

That means that Austria had a homicide rate of 0.6/100.000 people, or 1.6/100.000 people when attempted homicides are included as well.

http://www.oe24.at/oesterreich/chronik/Mordstatistik-2010-Wieder-weit-mehr-Morde/13295203

The newspaper "Österreich" says that there were "much more homicides" last year, but in reality this is not true, but it was only statistical noise because 2008 was the year with the lowest number of homicides in Austria on record. Normally the number of completed and attempted homicides is closer to 200 each year, so the 132 of last year isn't really "high". And we continue to have one of the lowest homicide rates on the planet, probably because of the strict gun laws.

[Tender Branson]

The first poll of the new year 2011, by Gallup for ÖSTERREICH newspaper:

26%  (-3.3) SPÖ
25% (+7.5) FPÖ
24%  (-2.0) ÖVP
15% (+4.6) Greens
  5%  (-5.7) BZÖ
  5%  (-1.1) Others

"Grand Coalition" only leads by 50-45 anymore ... LOL

http://www.ots.at/presseaussendung/OTS_20110115_OTS0015/oesterreich-umfrage-fpoe-liegt-vor-oevp

[Tender Branson]

Hilde Zach, the great mayor of Innsbruck during the last decade has died of cancer.

She was 68. RIP.

[Tender Branson]

If someone wants to watch, the ORF has a discussion about "Turks in Austria" right now live, with FPÖ-leader Strache:

http://tvthek.orf.at/live/1856201

That should be fun !

There´s also a racism debate at "Austria's Next Topmodel", in which a girl from Upper Austria called her model colleague (a girl with Nigerian parents, but born in Austria) as "n girl".

http://derstandard.at/1293370823923/Rassismus-bei-Austrias-next-Topmodel-Kandidatin-Magalie-muss-gehen

[Tender Branson]

New OGM poll for the current ORF debate about Turkish membership to the EU:

74% Oppose
14% Support

LOL.

[Tender Branson]

In an oversample of the poll of Austrian Turks only, 2/3 of Austrian Turks think Austrians are racist/xenophobic.

[Tender Branson]

This discussion is awesome, there's a Turkish-Austrian company owner in the audience who employs an Austrian skinhead (!!!) and says the 2 are like close friends ...

[Tender Branson]

BTW: The Turkish-Austrian moderator from the ORF is hot !

[Tender Branson]

Interesting that Peter Westenthaler of the BZÖ out-right-winged FPÖ-leader Strache in this discussion. Strache seemed less like a radical, more Chancellor-like.

[Insula Dei]

I'm so glad I'm not Austrian, right now

[Tender Branson]

New IMAS poll:

26% SPÖ
25% FPÖ
25% ÖVP
13% Greens
  8% BZÖ
  3% Others

Under-30 year olds only:

42% FPÖ
20% SPÖ
12% Greens
12% ÖVP
10% BZÖ

30-49 year olds only:

24% ÖVP
23% FPÖ
22% SPÖ
17% Greens
13% BZÖ

50 year olds and older only:

34% SPÖ
32% ÖVP
  9% Greens
  8% FPÖ
  3% BZÖ

Men:

30% FPÖ
27% SPÖ
25% ÖVP
11% Greens
  7% BZÖ

Women:

26% SPÖ
24% ÖVP
20% FPÖ
15% Greens
  9% BZÖ

http://www.imas.at/content/download/623/2957/version/1/file/2-2011.pdf

[Insula Dei]

How come younger voters are so fascist, weirdly sympathetic to the FPÖ? I could understand a broader trend being exaggerated, but this is just hilarious,...

[Franzl]

How come younger voters are so fascist, weirdly sympathetic to the FPÖ? I could understand a broader trend being exaggerated, but this is just hilarious,...

I don't know why, but it's nut unusual in Austria.

[Hash]

How come younger voters are so fascist, weirdly sympathetic to the FPÖ? I could understand a broader trend being exaggerated, but this is just hilarious,...

I don't know why, but it's nut unusual in Austria.

Or in other countries. The young electorate is also one of the FN's best electorates in France. The main reason seems to be young white lower middle-class males who are unemployed or maybe young people in rural areas who have been told that teh browns and teh Moslems are taking over tehir jobsz.

[Tender Branson]

How come younger voters are so fascist, weirdly sympathetic to the FPÖ? I could understand a broader trend being exaggerated, but this is just hilarious,...

I don't know why, but it's nut unusual in Austria.

Mostly because of this:

 

Strache has a lot of appeal with young voters, because he and the FPÖ is almost the only party that actively targets them.

And because SPÖ and ÖVP are the parties of the old people, they provide the monthly retirement money for them and they want to keep it this way.

Young people also perceive SPÖVP as outdated partys with no career possibilities for young people. You will almost find no young people in the party ranks of SPÖ and ÖVP, only people aged 40/50+, while the FPÖ is one of the "youngest" partys.

As Strache uses to say: "Those who control the Austrian Youth now, will control the country in the future."

[Tender Branson]

Today, Austria's best Chancellor - Bruno Kreisky - would be 100 years old.



Here´s a commentary from "The Guardian":

The modern left has much to learn from Austria's golden age

The great socialist leader Bruno Kreisky would be dismayed by the European left's meek acceptance of the rule of money power

Neil Clark
guardian.co.uk, Friday 21 January 2011

The 1970s, as I have argued before on this site, marked the high point of postwar socialism in western Europe. Across the continent in those pre-Thatcherite days, genuinely progressive statesmen set the agenda. In West Germany, there was Willy Brandt. In Sweden, Olof Palme. In Britain, Harold Wilson. But, for my money the greatest European socialist of them all was Austria's Bruno Kreisky, born exactly 100 years ago this weekend.

Kreisky led his country for 13 years, from 1970-83, winning a clear majority for the Socialist party of Austria a remarkable three times. During his time in office as the first popularly elected "red" chancellor, he transformed Austria into one of the most egalitarian societies on earth. Kreisky promoted working-class education, extended public ownership (under his leadership Austria had one of the largest nationalised sectors outside of communist eastern Europe) and expanded the welfare state. A committed Keynesian, with a hatred of unemployment and poverty, in the 1979 election he declared that he'd rather the government run up a deficit than people lose their jobs: "Hundreds of thousands unemployed matter more than a few billion schillings of debt."

Under Kreisky, Austria not only became a more equal society, it also became more prosperous. His leftwing economic policies showed that there certainly was an alternative to the monetarist economics that were soon to be imposed – at huge social and economic cost – in Britain.

Socially there were major advances too: the position of Austrian women was greatly improved, with maternity leave introduced, and homosexuality was decriminalised. Kreisky not only made Austria a better place, he tried his best to make the world a better place too.

A true internationalist, he supported a policy of "active neutrality" for his country in the cold war and worked for detente with the communist countries of eastern Europe. A Jewish anti-Zionist, Kreisky was a great champion of the rights of the Palestinian people and the strongest western European critic of Israel. He was the first European leader to meet with PLO leader Yasser Arafat and in 1979 gave an official state dinner in Arafat's honour in Vienna. He was also one of the first European politicians to take an interest in developing countries, calling in the early 1960s for a new Marshall plan for the south.

But it wasn't just Kreisky's policies that make him such a hero. It was his style of politics. Kreisky was a true man of the people – he kept his telephone number listed in the Vienna phone book after becoming chancellor, so that ordinary members of the public could call him to discuss their problems. Modest, humorous and immensely likeable, he debated on television without notes and said exactly what he thought. The contrast between Kreisky and the controlled, PR-obsessed politicians of today could not be greater.

In the 1970s, Kreisky was involved in a furious public row with Nazi-hunter Austrian Simon Wiesenthal. This developed over the Nazi past of some of Kreisky's ministers and the Freedom party leader Friedrich Peter, Kreisky's would-be coalition partner. Kreisky defended Peter and refused to sack ministers, leading Wiesenthal to call him a "renegade". Kreisky, who himself had lost close relatives in the Holocaust, in turn accused Wiesenthal, a supporter of the conservative opposition People's party, of "mafia" methods and of trying to bring him down.

Then there was Kreisky's support for nuclear power, which put him on a collision course with environmental groups. Some also criticised Kreisky for the building of the huge UNO-City complex in Vienna.

But these controversies should not cloud our judgment of the man Austrians affectionately nicknamed "Kaiser Bruno". Kreisky's sincerity shone through in everything that he did.

While a strong opponent of nazism, and indeed all forms of racism, he did not believe that people should be permanently barred from public life over bad decisions they had made in their youth. "A member of the Nazi party or an SS-man should be able to hold any political office in Austria, unless it can be proven that he had committed a crime," he declared. His support for nuclear power was, as John Hodgshon has argued in the Vienna Review, "wedded to a philosophy in which anything that translated into more jobs and industry must be good". The UNO-City was a demonstration of Kreisky's belief in the UN and Austria's role as an actively neutral country, at the heart of solving international disputes.

More than 20 years on from his death, he is still a cult figure in his country: a new poll showed that he is known to more Austrians than many members of the current governing coalition. And Austrians regard the Kreisky years as a true golden age – one where there was job security, prosperity and social harmony.

When Kreisky died, his great friend Willy Brandt said that Kreisky "performed a great service to the community and wealth of the peoples". How Europe could do with someone like him today.

If Kreisky were active in politics now, he'd be making the bankers and financial speculators pay for the mess they have caused and rejecting the new age of austerity. He'd be nationalising, not privatising, and putting the interests of the majority first. He'd be leading the opposition to Nato's war in Afghanistan and opposing any military action against Iran.

Kreisky's career shows us what can be achieved if the main party of the left elects a leader who is committed, sincere and who refuses to apologise for his or her socialist beliefs.

Instead, for the past 20 years, the main parties of the European left have gone in another direction. They have elected leaders – like Tony Blair – who have moved their parties away not just from socialism, but from social democracy too, and who have tamely accepted the international rule of money power. Bruno Kreisky, if he could see the Europe of 2011, would be greatly saddened at how the forces of capital have managed to destroy so many of the economic and social advances made in the postwar era, and how those advances which still remain are threatened by the new round of cutbacks.

The best way we can commemorate the centenary of this remarkable and inspirational politician is to do all we can to put Kreisky-style socialism back on Europe's political agenda.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/21/modern-left-austria-bruno-kreisky

[Tender Branson]

HC Strache, FPÖ-leader, now has more Facebook friends than Angela Merkel, making him the politician with the most "friends" in the German-speaking Facebook world.

He also has more fans than Sarah Palin (per capita).

But at least this page has more than twice the supporters:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kann-dieser-seelenlose-Ziegelstein-mehr-Freunde-haben-als-HC-Strache/290967602506?ref=ts

It is called "Can this soulless brick have more friends than HC Strache ?"

"Soulless brick" currently leads Strache by 179.000 to 78.000 ...

PS: The annual FPÖ New Year's convention took place yesterday with more than 3000 delegates @ the Vösendorf Pyramide. Let's see how the polls change now and if the FPÖ pulls into first place now ...

[Tender Branson]

Austrian defence minister sacks top general over army reform

Vienna - Austrian Defence Minister Norbert Darabos relieved his top general Monday in a bid to reestablish his authority among officers who have been opposing plans for ending compulsory military duty.


General Edmund Entacher (left) and Defense Minister Norbert Darabos (right), both from the SPÖ

Chief of the General Staff Edmund Entacher was ousted after publicly criticizing Darabos' plan for a professional army. The plans unveiled last week are popular with the public, but Entacher and the officers' association had called on the minister to resign.

'Because of these public comments and the resulting loss of confidence, I felt compelled to relieve the chief of the general staff today, Monday,' the Social Democratic minister said in a statement.

Darabos has the backing of influential tabloid media pushing for an end of the conscript system.

But Entacher said in an interview with the weekly Profil that he doubted there would be enough money or enough applicants to support such a model.

Darabos also faced criticism from his party's junior coalition partner, the centre-right People's Party.

The People's Party has yet to come up with its own reform concept, but its senior parliamentarian Peter Wittmann warned that 'we are arming the right-wing fringe and the desperate, who would be the first ones to sign up for such an army.'

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain that bordered Austria in the east, the army's size has been shrunk by some three quarters to 55,000, while politicians have struggled to define its new role.

Aware of the lack of public support for spending money on the military, Darabos plans to maintain the troop numbers and budget, by working with a mix of professional soldiers and paid volunteers from the ranks of current army reservists.

Link

...

Problem is: The sacking of the General was probably unconstitutional and the popular General (a SPÖ member like Defense Minister Darabos) has already announced that he will appeal the sacking at the Austrian Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has already ruled once against a Defense Minister who wanted to sack a member of his ministry. This guy then got the job back. The Austrian Supreme Court will probably argue in favor of Entacher and re-instate him because of Freedom of Speech grounds.

Minister Darabos is also accused by the other Generals (and the ÖVP) who worked out the models to replace the draft of manipulating the costs of the Darabos-preferred "Model 3" - which is a professional army model. Originally, as proposed by the Generals, "Model 3" would cost 2.7 Bio. € a year, but Darabos ordered a review of the costs and now the costs are 2.1 Bio. € per year. This is the same amount that the current draft system costs. The Generals and the ÖVP argue that Darabos manipulated the figures to make the costs lower, so as to not make the professional army model look more expensive than the current draft. Darabos argues that he ordered a review because the benefits for soldiers serving abroad proposed by the Generals is "way too high". ÖVP says their trust in Darabos is "shattered", but will still work with the SPÖ to define a new Security Strategy and Reform of the Military ...

[Tender Branson]

GAY CONTROVERSY IN AUSTRIA:

Niki Lauda accused of homophobia after attacking TV dancing show

Motor racing legend objects to gay men competing together on prime time programme



Niki Lauda demanded a halt to 'a gay show on state television'.

Austrian gay groups have demanded an apology from the former racing driver Niki Lauda after he made disparaging remarks about the pairing of a gay male celebrity with a male dancer on Austria's version of Strictly Come Dancing.

Alfons Haider, a 53-year-old TV presenter from Vienna, is set to waltz with another man in the forthcoming series of Dancing Stars on the state-owned ORF channel.



Lauda, the three-times world Formula One champion, told the Austrian daily newspaper Österreich he didn't want to have to explain to his children why two men were dancing together on prime time TV.

"There are some good traditions in our culture, one of which is that men dance with women," he said. "Soon we will reach the stage where we will all have to publicly apologise for being heterosexual."

Lauda, 61, said he was upset "that I have to explain to my children why men no longer dance with women on TV, as is traditional".

The German tabloid Bild asked Lauda if it was really so bad for two men to dance together. "No," said Lauda. "As long as they do it at home and not on TV, when children are watching."

He insisted he was not homophobic and that he would not mind at all if his son was gay. He employed "loads" of gay people on his airline, Niki, "even as instructors", he added.

Christian Högl, the chairman of the Vienna-based gay rights group Hosi, said: "We are really shocked and very surprised that Mr Lauda harbours such prejudice against homosexuals to make such an unjustified attack."

The group has invited Lauda to the city's Rainbow Ball next month in a bid to educate him about homosexuality.

Dancing Stars is not due to start until March, but Lauda wants ORF bosses to pull the plug on the gay pairing.

"I demand that the general director Alex Wrabetz, who is in an upright marriage, stops this gay dance number – and that the PR-crazy Alfons Haider is not permitted to put on a gay show on state owned television," Lauda told Österreich.

Wrabetz said : "I don't chose Mr Lauda's pilots and he doesn't choose our dancers."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/26/niki-lauda-homophobia-row-austria

...

Meanwhile, Austrians have nothing against Haider dancing with a man, according to a new poll out today by Gallup/Ö24:



54% say Haider should dance with his male partner.



65% of women are in favor, while men are opposed by 44-56.



76% of under-30-year-olds are in favor, 30-50 year-olds are split and old people are opposed.



Members of Greens, SPÖ and BZÖ are in favor, members of FPÖ and ÖVP are opposed.

http://www.oe24.at/leute/oesterreich/Umfrage-Haider-soll-mit-Mann-tanzen/16402597

...

Interesting how closely the positions of Austrians mirror the voting patterns in the US on the issue of gays ...

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

Austrian gay groups have demanded an apology from the former racing driver Niki Lauda after he made disparaging remarks about the pairing of a gay male celebrity with a male dancer on Austria's version of Strictly Come Dancing.

Alfons Haider, a 53-year-old TV presenter from Vienna, is set to waltz with another man in the forthcoming series of Dancing Stars on the state-owned ORF channel.

This is probably a stupid question, but - Alfons Haider definitely isn't a relation of Jorg Haider?

[Tender Branson]

Austrian gay groups have demanded an apology from the former racing driver Niki Lauda after he made disparaging remarks about the pairing of a gay male celebrity with a male dancer on Austria's version of Strictly Come Dancing.

Alfons Haider, a 53-year-old TV presenter from Vienna, is set to waltz with another man in the forthcoming series of Dancing Stars on the state-owned ORF channel.

This is probably a stupid question, but - Alfons Haider definitely isn't a relation of Jorg Haider?

No, they are not related. There are many people in Austria named Haider.

[Tender Branson]

New Market poll for the newspaper "Standard":

29% SPÖ
27% ÖVP
24% FPÖ
12% Greens
  6% BZÖ
  2% Others

http://derstandard.at/1296696403787/Kanzlerfrage-17-Prozent-fuer-Faymann-15-Prozent-fuer-Proell

[Tender Branson]

The capital of the most conservative Austrian district, Lienz, elected a female SPÖ-member for Mayor yesterday - for the first time ever.



The loss of the ÖVP candidate in Lienz can be compared with the ousting of Ben Ali in Tunesia or Mubarak in Egypt ... LOL

Elisabeth Blanik, who was defeated in the previous mayoral election by about 15 votes, this time defeated the incumbent with more than 55% of the vote.

Lienz usually casts about 70-80% of the vote for the Center-Right-Parties (ÖVP, FPÖ, BZÖ, DC):

[Tender Branson]

New Gallup/Ö24 poll:

27% SPÖ
25% FPÖ
25% ÖVP
13% Greens
  5% BZÖ
  5% Others

New IFES poll:

29% SPÖ
24% FPÖ
24% ÖVP
14% Greens
  4% BZÖ
  5% Others

SPÖVP Government Approval Rating:

26% Approve
74% Disapprove

52% of Austrians are currently also in favor of new elections.

http://www.oe24.at/oesterreich/politik/Schon-74-sind-mit-Koalition-unzufrieden/17589730