Far-right leader Herbert Kickl says he’s prepared for new elections if his party can’t find a submissive junior partner.
Herbert Kickl, leader of Austria’s anti-immigrant Freedom Party (FPÖ), says he will ditch coalition talks in favor of new elections if he doesn’t get what he wants from the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), his only viable partner in a prospective government.
Talks will start in the coming days, but Kickl says he will only agree to form a government if the conservatives show they are ready to “start a new era” in Austrian politics and are prepared to “rebuild” the country. “We have no time to lose,” he declared.
But the ÖVP will have to fully accept the FPÖ as its senior partner, Kickl added.
If the ÖVP is unable to adapt to these new realities, “then there will be new elections,” Kickl said. “We are prepared for that.”
Mainstream parties initially gave the FPÖ, which won the most seats in September’s elections, the cold shoulder. But after talks among the other parties collapsed last week, Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen on Monday tasked Kickl with forming a new government.
The FPÖ has been in government before, but only as a junior partner. Kickl’s threat to abandon the talks if his party doesn’t occupy the driver’s seat in government this time around isn’t empty, in light of the party’s growing popularity.
Not only did the FPÖ, which was founded by former Nazis in 1956, win the most seats in the National Assembly in September’s elections, but its polling numbers have risen since then.
Since September the FPÖ has surged in the polls to around 35 per cent — 7 percentage points above its general election result.
If Kickl successfully forms a new government he would become Austria’s new chancellor and the country’s first far-right leader since the end of World War II.
With Kickl in charge, Austria would join the growing pro-Kremlin bloc in Central Europe, led by Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Slovakia’s Robert Fico, with the Czech Republic potentially following suit if populist Andrej Babiš wins the upcoming parliamentary election in October.
