Petra Stubier, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Austria’s liberal democratic daily newspaper, made a striking analysis at the end of the debate program between Austrian Chancellor and ÖVP leader Karl Nehammer and opposition leader Andreas Babler on ORF, using the headline “ÖVP and SPÖ – how will this work?” The elections are on September 29. Among the nearly 400 thousand Turkish immigrants in Austria, more than 200 thousand are Austrian citizens and those over the age of 16 have the right to vote.
We are translating the analysis into Turkish as Yeni Vatan Newspaper and presenting it to the attention of our readers.
“ÖVP and SPÖ – how will this work?”
The duel between Nehammer and Babler showed one thing: Both prefer to deepen the rifts between their parties rather than work together on a concept for the future.
It is not surprising that the tone in the election campaigns has hardened as the election date approaches. The parties still have less than two weeks to fight for every vote. In this context, a fierce battle was expected to take place in the duel between the leading candidates of the ÖVP and SPÖ on ORF TV on Thursday evening.
But what was surprising was the harshness and contempt towards each other. Andreas Babler and Karl Nehammer had drawn their swords verbally with one goal in mind: Every blow would be below the belt. Both were in the running to be prime minister of the next government, but neither behaved like a prime minister in the television studio.
Babler was the most aggressive, which is no insult for an opposition leader. But he relied more on emotion than on fact, as if he were once again standing before the delegates who had elected him chairman of the SPÖ in an emotional vote at the party conference in Linz. But the scene was different at the ORF. Here the aim was to appeal to the “centre of society” that had not yet been convinced by Babler and the SPÖ. A left-wing red heat bath does not really help here.
Strong negative emotions
Babler only criticised the previous OVP-Green coalition during one of its strongest terms for failing in terms of content and listed arguments that ÖVP leader Prime Minister Nehammer had difficulty refuting. But mostly it was about the alleged “disrespect” and “remoteness” of the ÖVP and Nehammer.
Babler was appealing to an emotion felt by someone from a position of weakness; a persistent sense of resentment resonated. The SPÖ would certainly have been right if it had addressed issues such as distributive justice and people’s fear of financial collapse given the still high inflation.
Nehammer, on the other hand, allowed himself to be provoked. If Herbert Kickl succeeds in doing the same thing next week, Prime Minister Nehammer will have a problem. He responded to Babler with stale jokes straight out of a mothball box. For example, he said that the ÖVP defended property while the SPÖ supported “prefabricated housing”. Or that the “Christian Socialists” were on the side of the people while the SPÖ “only thought about the collective”. The attack that Babler and the SPÖ were “stuck in the 1930s” was bold. Back then, the Christian Socialists had hit the Social Democrats on the municipal housing estates.
Deep ideological divisions
In the face of all these mutual jabs at the belt, one wonders: How or if cooperation between these two parties and their leaders can succeed? This is a legitimate question, given that Nehammer has categorically rejected a coalition with the FPÖ led by Kickl, and that the FPÖ will not send its leader into the desert in the event of an election victory. Behind the scenes, pragmatic forces with influence on both sides are pushing for a coalition between the ÖVP and the SPÖ, together with a third partner. Given the enormous challenges Austria faces, the broadest possible cooperation in government would make sense. The central bank’s devastating GDP forecast, which predicts a recession, is just one example.
But if Babler and Nehammer continue to diligently deepen the gap between the SPÖ and the ÖVP, nothing will come of it. My prediction is certainly not even a bold one. (Source/Kaynak> Der Standard, Petra Stuiber, September 13, 2024)
Discussion in ORF
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2024-09-15 21:29:22