The president of Austria, Alexander Van der Bellen, tasked this Monday the leader of the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), Herbert Kickl, with the task of forming a government after the collapse last weekend of previous negotiations between conservatives, social democrats and centrists.
In a speech to the nation after a meeting with Kickl, The Austrian president recalled that the Freedom Party received the most votes in the September legislative elections.
The president has declared himself aware of the existence of the “cordon sanitaire” imposed by the three parties that failed in the coalition negotiations and has warned that he has not “taken the step lightly” of entrusting the FPÖ with the task of forming a government. and assured that “he will ensure respect for the rule of law.”
In fact, this morning hundreds of protesters gathered in front of the headquarters of the Presidency, the Hofburg Imperial Palace in Vienna, to protest against a possibility that has gained strength this weekend: a coalition of the FPÖ with the conservative People’s Party Austrian (OVP), which has not closed its doors to an alliance where it would be the minority partner.
Kickl, 55, was already Minister of the Interior between 2017 and 2019 in a government led by the OVP that was blown up due to the well-known ‘Ibiza case’, a corruption scandal detected when the FPÖ was part of the government coalition. of the former chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, also involved in other crimes.
The protest was called in part by the Jewish Students of Austria organization, whose president, Alon Ishay, has denounced Kickl as a phil-Nazi. “The fact that someone who calls himself People’s Chancellor,” a title coined by National Socialism, “can now become Chancellor of Austria brings back very dark memories for us.”young Jews and the Jewish community,” he assured the newspaper ‘Die Presse’.
Your electoral program
The FPÖ is a party founded after the Second World War by former Nazi leaders and to this day it brings together the most extremist and right-wing circles in the country.
The main leaders of the party, although not Kickl himself, are members of pan-German brotherhoods, where they were socialized in a nationalist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic environment.
In its electoral program, entitled ‘Fortress Austria’, the Freedom Party clearly advocates “the emigration of uninvited foreigners”, achieving a more “homogeneous” nation through strict border control and the suspension of the right of asylum through an Emergency Law.
In addition, he also calls for an end to sanctions against Russia, harshly criticizes Western military aid to Ukraine and wants to withdraw from the European Sky Shield Initiative, an anti-missile defense project launched by Germany.
