VIENNA, Oct. 14 (Xinhua) -- Austrian center-right People's Party (OVP) would likely take the first place in Sunday's parliamentary elections, but a coalition with the right populist Freedom Party (FPO) is not to be taken for granted, former Austrian Vice-Chancellor Erhard Busek said.
The first place would likely fall in line with what opinion poll suggests and that would mean the OVP leader, 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz who also serves as the Austrian foreign minister, will see his party to victory, said Busek, now the head of the Institute for the Danube Region and Central Europe (IDM), in a recent interview with Xinhua.
However, Busek noted that a coalition between the OVP and the FPO is also not to be taken for granted, even though the grouping has gained traction among the media due to public discontent with the grand coalition between the OVP and the Social Democrats (SPO) headed by chancellor Christian Kern.
COALITION UNCERTAIN
Opinion polls showed that Kurz's conservative party maintained lead with some 33 percent of votes, followed by the SPO with 27 percent and the FPO with 25 percent of votes respectively.
Kern has been embroiled in a media storm, with allegations by a former party advisor, Israeli national Tal Silberstein, spearheaded a dirty campaigning effort on facebook, in particular against Kurz. He denies having had knowledge of what allegedly took place.
Talk from within the OVP suggests Kurz is not certain of whether the FPO, under the leadership of Heinz-Christian Strache, would make a suitable partner. The FPO has also demanded control of certain ministries under a potential coalition, including Kurz's own foreign ministry and the interior ministry, another crucial post.
The other alternative of an FPO-SPO coalition is also on the table.Busek believes the SPO could make many concessions to the FPO in a bid to stay in power.
Whichever constellation will form the next coalition government, at present it is an "ambivalent situation," Busek believes, with no guarantees of any outcome.
Should a party choose to form a coalition with the FPO, Busek believes the stigma of a far-right party in federal governance would no longer be as present as it was following the 1999 election by which the FPO was the second strongest in the vote, and formed a coalition with the OVP in the following year.
That result sent shockwaves through the European establishment and attracted strong condemnation from around the world, including the threat of sanctions.
He said that the reaction would not be as "aggressive," given the fact that there are a number of similar groupings in other nations. There could, however, be extra reason for Kurz to not wish to hand the foreign ministry portfolio over to the FPO, particularly when considering dealings with the European Union, Busek said.
What is known, however, is that all parties have shifted toward populism, and the traditional behaviors of the two grand coalition partners, along with their voter bases, have changed significantly.
POLITICAL ADVERTISING
The parties have increasingly bought into what issues the media has pushed rather than what the people are really interested in, he said.
Migration, the feeling of a lack of security and fears of Islam, are now at the forefront of discussions, as they are elsewhere in Europe, Busek said.
Busek believes these to be significantly overstated. While migration is an issue that needs to be addressed, including the passage of illegal migrants into Europe, the focus on issues of primary importance to average Austrians is often lost.
Economic development, social security and the manner in which the country's administration is run are of greater concern to the people, he said.
As a self-described "oldie" in the political world, and someone who has known the OVP well for about 50 years, Busek sees much of these changes in stance of the major parties as "pure marketing."
He cited Kurz as an example, as having attempted to market his leadership of the party as a change in direction, but with no actual indication of what this change would entail.
The young leader is clever in how he has positioned the party ahead of the election, in going after the top spot, but the actual content of his program is still largely unknown, he said.
This includes a lack of position on education and taxes, two important issues. "Maybe he has a clear program for himself, but it's not being discussed," he said.
While the SPO has also gone down the populist path, it is in part suffering from a kind of saturation of social democracy in Europe, Busek believes, that has seen a dip in popularity in similar parties across the continent.
Austria can already be seen as a social democracy, and the strong points of the SPO, including social security, social regulation and pensions, have largely been addressed, prompting people to start to look past the party to elsewhere.
Busek does not expect the dirty campaigning scandal to affect the party too much, noting that in his experience voters often see such events as part and parcel of politics.
This development has continued the trend of the FPO acting as the "worker's party," seen through its local government majority in the Viennese district of Simmering, previously a long-standing SPO stronghold.
As the change has been seen for a very long time, "there's no more guaranteed identity between the working class and the social democrats," Busek said.
He sees support for FPO as largely being out of protest, and while the specter a National-Socialist past has long kept Germans away from supporting such parties, this has not been as much of a problem for Austrians.
While the FPO does have supporters for its own policies, most support is simply a tactic used by voters to give the other parties a jolt.
Kurz, as a chancellor's hopeful, is looking at some of the right problems, but the key will be whether the right solutions can be found and realized, Busek said.
