SThe Austrian public recently noted with amazement that between the Viennese Ballhausplatz, where the Federal Chancellor resides, and the Parliament on the ring road, fauna frolic in a variety that is only surpassed in the Schönbrunn Zoo. Badger and wild boar, deer and bull, monkey and rattlesnake and two species of peacock can be found there.
Or more precisely, they were four years ago. In 2017, the “Research Affairs” institute of opinion researcher Sabine Beinschab conducted an investigation into which creatures the Austrians associated with which of their top politicians at the time.
Sebastian Kurz, who was preparing that year to first conquer the party leadership of the Christian Democratic ÖVP and then also the Federal Chancellery, appeared to people as a dolphin or squirrel if they liked to look at him favorably, or as a peacock.
Christian Kern, his social democratic previous tenant at Ballhausplatz, was also a peacock, but for his fans a stag. The rattlesnake was Heinz-Christian Strache, the FPÖ leader, who at the time in Ibiza became the involuntary protagonist of a video that would only become known two years later, but then with all the greater aplomb.
Obfuscation of the real purpose?
Strategists at party headquarters may need such information when planning election campaigns. They can then tailor their campaigns to emphasize their candidate’s supposedly good qualities – and the unfavorable ones of the competition as well. And with such superficially absurd animal associations, respondents can give an honest answer in a less self-conscious way than if you ask directly about their characteristics. In any case, such methods are not unknown in market research.
The study by the opinion research institute is explosive not because of the seemingly bizarre subject, but because it was not paid for by a party headquarters, but by the Ministry of Finance, i.e. from taxpayers’ money. According to the title, it dealt with “economic and budgetary policy including expansion”. The Public Prosecutor’s Office for Economic Affairs and Corruption is investigating the obvious suspicion that this is a concealment of the actual party-political purpose.
These are the same investigations that cost Sebastian Kurz his offices and political career last fall. In short, Beinschab and the other persons involved in these proceedings, or their representatives, have publicly denied the allegation of criminal misconduct.
For some time there has therefore been curiosity about the content of these studies. Years ago, the opposition called for studies commissioned by the ministers to be published, but so far to no avail. Most recently, the Ministry of Finance had referred to the fact that the studies were now the subject of investigations and could therefore not be published. But the investigators apparently raised no objections, so that since Wednesday the studies by the said institute can be read on the ministry’s website – at least all but two.
A total of 14 orders for a good half a million euros have been awarded to Beinschab by the Ministry of Finance since 2016. The most expensive was the one with the tier expansion. According to the estimate, it was originally supposed to cost 35,000 euros and ended up costing 156,000 euros. The investigators’ suspicions were aroused by the cell phone chats of the then top official Thomas Schmid. In a tabloid newspaper, he had described collusion about published surveys to ÖVP people as a “Beinschab Austria tool” and asked Beinschab in a text message to “pack in” open costs for surveys in studies for the ministry.
Kurz let it be known that he had neither commissioned these surveys nor did he know that such surveys existed. Besides, he doesn’t know what value he would have gained from being compared to squirrels, dolphins, or a sneaky peacock.
Today’s Finance Minister Magnus Brunner (ÖVP) found that “something is wrong”. It is not known who commissioned the studies, nor why and how the “irrelevant” questions for the ministry arose. The opposition demanded that the ÖVP had to “pay back” the money to the ministry.