1979 General Election - Austrian Election Series

Austria's first communist government was not reelected in 1976, instead the LKP and especially the CSP saw gains. Kurt Waldheim and Karl Gruber soon agreed to form a coalition government of the centre-right, with the former as Chancellor and the latter as Vice-Chancellor and Foreign Minister.

The government's first two years would be unspectactular, with few measures and reforms passed, due to its small majority and a reliance on a few quite centre-left-leaning CSP members of parliament. Proposed measure to scale back the KPÖ-led government's social measures were met with heavy opposition both by the public and also within the coalition partners, and so Waldheim was forced to grudingly retreat on that matter.

After two uneventful years, a political bomb exploded in the fall of 1978. The renowed "nazi hunter", the jewish holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal, went to the public with informations about Chancellor Waldheim's past during the Second World War. A political battle ensued, when the press came up with more detail in the following weeks, publishing that Waldheim was involved with war crimes in Yugoslavia. The KPÖ and SPÖ publicly demanded Waldheim's resignal, but the Chancellor remained stubborn, claiming he "had received a mandate by the Austrian people". The debate and the subsequent loss of the public opinion for the government proved disastrous for the government, and in January 1979, Vice-Chancellor Gruber of the CSP and Minister of Education Alois Mock of the LKP went to the public, stating that they had lost confidence in the Chancellor and intended to force new elections. Mock and 26 LKP MPs went so far to leave the party and form a new electoral list for the election, the Oppositionelle Volksliste (Oppositional People's List - VL).

With the government having lost its majority, Waldheim was forced to call early elections for March 1979.

LKP:
The party, while still recovering from the split, is united fully behind and tailored fully towards Chancellor Waldheim. They portrait the "Waldheim-affair" as an international and leftist operation to discredit Austria, wanting to create a feeling of consensus behind the persona of the Chancellor. When asked about his past, Waldheim gives only short and meaningless answers, stating his focus "is on Austria's future, and the future alone".

KPÖ:
The communists, the strongest opposition party, have a new leader after Ernst Fischer resigned in 1976, former Minister of Families and Women, Johanna Dohnal, marking the first time a woman is leading one of Austria's parties. The communists vehemently oppose Waldheim, claiming Austria finally should finish the process of entnazification, starting with "voting out this Chancellor", the Waldheim affair seemingly the only issue that really matters in this election.

SPÖ:
Christian Broda's SPÖ is, like their communist comrades, set out fully in opposition to the Waldheim government. Unlike most other parties, they speak of other issues as well however, campaigning also on Broda's reforms as Minister of Justice and proposing a tax reform, claiming the current tax structure, passed by the Klaus government, would unproportionally favour the rich at the expense of working class Austrians.

CSP:
The CSP has left the government in its last days, and due to Waldheim's unpopularity, tries to reposition itsself as a new, second option for the Austrian right, clearly to the right of its former election campaigns. They fully renounce intentions to participate in a government alongside the KPÖ, instead running on a program of "pro-business solutions for Austria - without Waldheim".

VL:
Formed as a split-off of those LKP members unsatisfied with Waldheim, the new party is fishing in just the same voter's pond as the CSP and the main, "old" LKP. They define themselves towards the latter as an opposition to Waldheim, and towards the former as a party of "true conservative credentials", not of "pseudo-socialist farmers".

FPÖ:
Re-emerging from the grave, the FPÖ tries to be sustained as a fourth clearly right-of-centre party, unlike the VL and CSP however in support of Chancellor Waldheim. They denounce any foreign involvement in Austrian internal issues, which is their view on the Waldheim-affair, and instead voice a vaguely center-right program, trying to position themselves as the LKP's ideal partner in coalition.

3 days, as usual

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