Austrian People's Party suffers defeat to Social Democrats

dpa German Press Agency
Published: Sunday October 1, 2006

Vienna- Austria was preparing for a change of government after the ruling conservative People's Party (VP), in power for seven years, lagged behind the opposition Social Democrats (SP) after nearly all votes were counted in Sunday's general election. The preliminary final results - which do not include 400,000 absentee ballots - showed the Social Democrats at 35.71 percent ahead of the VP with 34.22 per cent, Interior Minister Liese Prokop said.

SP leader Alfred Gusenbauer said he "never gave up hope" of a victory.

"It was clear that Austrians thought the country's wealth was not distributed fairly enough and that corrections were necessary," he said.

"At the end of the day, logical reasons determined the decision," he said on Austrian state television.

Compared with the 2002 elections, in which it took 42.3 per cent of votes, the VP lost seven percentage points.

Chancellor Schuessel said his party's results were a "big disappointment" and that an "in-depth analysis" was necessary. He ruled out however resigning as party leader.

The right-wing BZ (4.2 per cent) appeared to have narrowly made the 4-per-cent threshold necessary to sit in parliament.

The preliminary results make a grand coalition between the SP and VP the most likely option. If they failed to reach agreement, a centre-right coalition of the VP, FP and BZ would also theoretically be possible.

The Greens (10.49 per cent) lost the race for third position to the Freedom Party (11.21 per cent), but reached their declared goal of passing the 10-per-cent mark.

"We reached the best result in the Green's history," party leader Alexander van der Bellen said.

Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache said his party was the "winner of the evening."

"The government did not manage to destroy us," he said, adding that while the FP wanted to be a "strong opposition," the party did not rule out joining a coalition.

The parties were competing for 183 seats in Austria?s lower house of parliament.

Turnout was lower than in previous elections with only 74.22 per cent voting, one reason for the conservatives' losses, analysts said.

Campaigning was dominated by the anti-immigrant slogans of two extreme-right parties, BZ (Alliance for Austria's Future), which split from Freedom Party (FP) of then leader Joerg Haider in spring 2005.

Both parties called for the deportation of immigrants, a ban on the Muslim headscarf and mosques and for Turkey's EU entry to be blocked.

The other main issue addressed by all parties was the decline of Austria's welfare state.

Critics have described the election as thin on substance, lacking in concrete proposals and probably the dirtiest in Austria's history, filled with personal attacks, internet rumours and blatant populism

© 2006 dpa German Press Agency