Elections: Austria to renew its green chancellor

CHOICE OF CONTINUITY: Austrians must renew environmentalist President Alexander van der Bellen on Sunday, whose only opponents are weak far-right and civil society candidates.

With broad support from the political class, she has more than 50% of the vote in the polls and is well on her way to winning the first round of voting against six opponents – all men.

“The biggest competitor on Sunday will be Sofa,” the 78-year-old head of state joked at the end of the campaign in front of his supporters on Friday. “If you care about liberal democracy, vote,” he added.

The far-right FPÖ party, which almost won against him in 2016, wants to play the contest again. But its candidate is little known: 60-year-old Walter Rosencrans, who will collect only 15% of the vote against recent elections in Sweden and Italy.

Corruption cases cost Austria’s worst radical franchise. Six years ago, he was the first person to come close to winning a presidential election in Europe. Founded by ex-Nazis, the FPÖ ultimately lost with more than 46% of the vote, an epilogue to a ballot with twists and turns that left Brussels and Austria’s Western partners in disarray.

If the party later entered government in alliance with young Sebastian Kurz’s conservatives, it had to leave power in 2019 after incredible scandals and has never since regained its past glory.

Faced with this turmoil and succession of principalities, Alexander van der Bellen guaranteed the continuity of the state, with functions traditionally aimed at ensuring order. According to political scientist Thomas Hofer, he can present himself today as “the only one who can avoid chaos”.

According to Julia Parthimüller of the University of Vienna, this pro-Europeanism passes for “unity”, which is “highly appreciated” compared to “the many crises facing many European countries”. He led a moderate campaign without debate with his rivals, recommending “clarity” and “efficiency” to “get through the turmoil as calmly as possible,” citing inflation, the Ukraine war and crisis energy.

The message seems to have been received by voters fed up with the political upheavals of recent years. In the Alpine nation of 9 million people, 6.4 million voters, including Austro-American Arnold Schwarzenegger, a strong supporter of the president, are invited to vote for a six-year term. Polling stations will open at 7 am and close at 5 pm, with exit expected.

However, the outgoing president’s peculiar profile does not guarantee him such a political destiny. Twice-married in Catholic land, the austere, somewhat rigid, agnostic, former boss of the Greens and dean of the Faculty of Economics in Vienna managed to forget his strong anchor on the left to unite people.

A tongue-in-cheek, heavy smoker with an eternal three-day beard, he’s happy to be photographed in Loden – a traditional alpine jacket – at the base of glaciers to confirm his patriotism. A rare ecologist as the leader of a democracy, he is the son of refugees and has an exotic Batavian surname: his Protestant family emigrated from the Netherlands to Russia in the 18th century.

His father, an aristocrat, and his Estonian mother enlisted in Vienna during World War II, before moving to Tyrol to escape the Red Army’s arrival.