Austria heads for snap poll as coalition shatters

VIENNA: Austria is heading for a snap parliamentary election after the centre-left chancellor said on Sunday the ruling coalition had been shattered by his ambitious young foreign minister, who is poised to take over the main conservative party.

An election will give the farright Freedom Party (FPO) a good chance of entering national government less than a year after its candidate lost a presidential run-off. The FPO is leading in opinion polls and the two centrist parties that have dominated postwar politics in Austria are now at daggers drawn.

But surveys suggest the conservative People’s Party (OVP) would leap from third to first place, and support for the FPO and Kern’s Social Democrats would fall, if Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz took over as OVP leader, as he is expected to do. Forming a government usually requires at least two parties.

“There will definitely... be an election, I assume in the coming autumn,” Kern said in an interview with ORF TV.

He had resisted the idea of a snap election, calling for the coalition to keep working until its term ends in more than a year’s time.

Kurz, 30, is a star of Austrian politics who is widely seen as his party’s best hope of reviving its fortunes. The current OVP leader, Reinhold Mitterlehner, announced on Wednesday that he was stepping down, partly because of his inability to stop in-fighting among his ministers.

“The OVP ended the coalition on Friday,” Kern said, referring to Kurz’s speech. Calling a snap election requires a majority in parliament. The FPO supports the idea — it and the OVP are three seats short of a majority.

“I have difficulty picturing a scenario in which we could put together a stable minority government.

“It would possibly have a numerical majority but probably not a political majority,” said Kern, who took over as chancellor and head of the Social Democrats (SPO) a year ago.