Far-right seeks gains in Vienna elections

Chances are practically nonexistent that Freedom Party chief
Heinz-Christian Strache will garner enough support to become Vienna’s mayor.
But polls suggest the city’s popular incumbent leader, Michael Haeupl, may see
his Social Democrats lose their absolute majority of mandates because of a
surge in support for the former party of the late Joerg Haider.
In 2005 elections, the center-left Social Democrats won 49.1
percent of the vote, followed by the center-right People’s Party with 18.8
percent. The Freedom Party trailed in third place with 14.8 percent, just
slightly ahead of the Greens.
Five years on, some vote watchers predict that Strache’s
group could get at least 20 percent — and snag second place.
“I’m convinced we’ll bring about liberation from the red
diktat,” Strache was quoted as saying by the Austria Press Agency as he cast
his ballot in a working class neighborhood with an increasingly Turkish
immigrant population. The Social Democrats are known as “the reds” locally.
Haeupl, accompanied by his son to a polling station across
town, appeared optimistic his party would be able to maintain an absolute
majority but acknowledged in comments carried by APA that he didn’t know for
sure.
Over the past few months, the Freedom Party has tried to
shore up support through, among other things, provocative campaign posters that
mentioned “Vienna blood” — originally a waltz by Johann Strauss — which critics
claimed had clear racist undertones when used in this political context.
It also circulated a controversial comic strip that features
a character resembling Strache who urges a young boy to use his sling shot to
hit Mustafa, who led the historic Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683.
The Social Democrats, meanwhile, have tried to position the
61-year-old Haeupl — mayor since 1994 — as a strong captain who has proven
capable of steering the city through difficult times. In a last minute attempt
to vie for votes and change the focus of debate leading up to the election,
Haeupl recently also voiced support for an end to conscription and called for a
referendum on the matter.
In response to the Freedom Party, the young Social Democrats
handed out a comic that portrays Strache as brain-dead and remote-controlled
and in which a hero named “Mr. X” beats up Nazi zombies.
The People’s Party, although in a governing coalition with
the Social Democrats on the national level, has attempted to portray itself as
the best alternative to those keen on breaking their absolute hold on power.
Slightly more than 1.1 million Austrian voters are eligible
to participate in the Vienna election, with roughly another 108,000 non-Austrian
EU citizens who are registered in the city allowed to cast ballots to pick the
leadership of the capital’s 23 districts.
Final results are not expected until later this month.