The leader of center-right New People’s Party, Sebastian Kurz, won the Austrian elections on Sunday and is to be the next Chancellor. He turned 31 in August and once he assumes office he will be the younger leader in the Western world.
According to preliminary results published by the Interior Ministry on Monday morning:
- Kurz’s party (ÖVP) leads with 31.6%
- Far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) won 27.4 %
- Social-democrats of Chancellor Kern (SPÖ) received 26.7%.
The results will be finalized once the letter votes have been counted.
Possible coalition scenarios are a) ÖVP+SPÖ, b) ÖVP+FPÖ, c) SPÖ+FPÖ with the worst scenario being a coalition government consisting of right-wing Kurz and the far-right.
With more than the half of voters to have tipped in favor of Xenophobia and Euroscepticism, Austria has clearly fallen victim to right-wing populism and conservatism in its worse definition.
Sebastian Kurz is young, however, anything but progressive. He put Migration on top of his election campaign overwhelming even the far-right.
As Foreign Minister he was the main protagonists in closing the Balkan route, his position was and still is that refugees and migrants should remain in Greece. He called for a more effective control of the EU external borders.
In 2016, Sebastian Kurz proposed that refugees coming to the EU should be interned offshore that is on a Greek island, rather than allowed on to the continent. His vision was a European “Ellis Island” entry gate – most likely on the island of Lesvos.
On economic issues, he was saying in favor of Grexit.
He also supports the view that Turkey should never join the European Union.
It is worth noting that Austria’s next chancellor has no university degree; he has just a far-right agenda masked under the coat of center-right.
Kurz’s win has xenophobic Europeans and Americans cheer, many of social media compare him to US President Donald Trump, adding hashtag #MAGA in its Austria version Make Austria Great Again.
German far-right AfD and Merkel’s CDU welcome Kurz’s win. The hawks in Merkel’s party had populist daily Bild wonder “Why don’t we have someone like him?”
As for far-right FPÖ, it was the party that polluted the environment of Austria in 2010 with thousands of anti-Greek election campaign posters.
The slogan “Better: Our Money to our People!”
