|
Reuters
November 24,
2002
Summary: Article written on
the day of the 2002 elections forcecasts big losses for the Freedom
Party of Austria, which turned out to be accurate.
Austrians Begin Voting, Outcome Wide Open
November 24, 2002
VIENNA - Austrians began casting their votes for a new parliament
Sunday, but the outcome was unpredictable with a quarter of
Austria's voters undecided and far-right leader Joerg Haider's
Freedom Party in freefall. Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel's
conservative People's Party, which broke off an alliance with Haider
in September, could see its strongest gains in decades but still
wind up in opposition if Haider's party does not do well enough to
form a coalition. The leftist Social Democrats hope to return to
power after nearly three years in opposition, either with the
smaller Greens or in a repeat of the ``grand coalition'' with the
conservatives that governed for 13 years until 2000. The snap
election was called after Haider triggered a coalition crisis by
trying to retake control of the party he led for 15 years until
2000, forcing the resignation of moderate Freedom ministers.
Schuessel then called off the coalition. Haider drove through the
morning fog in his dark blue Porsche Targa two hours after the 7:00
a.m. (0600 GMT) opening of polls to cast his vote in his home town
of Klagenfurt, the provincial capital of Carinthia where he is
governor. Unlike Austrian political analysts who say Haider's party
could lose as much as two thirds of its seats in parliament, the
anti-immigration firebrand was optimistic. ``I expect a good
result, one that leads to a stable development, and I hope that all
the predictions from the recent opinion polls don't come true,''
Haider told reporters. But one former Haider supporter expressed
annoyance that he toppled the government and forced her to visit her
local polling station a year ahead of next year's scheduled general
election. ``I've gone back to voting for the conservatives,''
Klagenfurt pensioner Margarete Urban told Reuters. ``Last time I
voted for the Freedom Party because they seemed to have the best
line on cracking down on immigration. But they've become a fractious
and divided party. They've lost all credibility for me,'' Urban
added. Marie Spitaller, a Klagenfurt nurse, was even more
disgruntled. ``I'm very irritated with the current government,''
she said. ``There's no stability. They're all at each other's
throats. I hope the Freedom Party loses hugely.'' But with the
Social Democrats and People's Party both polling around 40 percent
on the eve of the election, political analysts said it was
impossible to predict the outcome. ``It looks like a real
neck-and-neck race,'' said Peter Hajek of the Vienna-based OGM
Institute. ``The two traditional partiesare heading for around 40
percent, and the Greens and Freedom Party are also neck-and-neck
around 10 percent or maybe even less,'' Hajek told Reuters.
Austria's ailing economy, forecast to grow less than one percent
this year with unemployment rising to over five percent, has been
the focus of campaigning. Polls close at 5 p.m. (1600 GMT), with
the first exit polls due immediately afterwards on Austrian state
television. CLOSE RACE Preliminary official results are expected
as early as 7:30 p.m. (1830 GMT). With a close race expected, the
counting of some 380,000 ballots from overseas and people traveling
on election day could delay a final result for a few weeks. Adding
to uncertainty, pollsters said a record quarter of Austria's 5.9
million voters were still undecided a week ago. While it could be
weeks before a new government is settled, it is clear that Haider's
anti-immigration, euroskeptic Freedom Party faces an electoral
drubbing from voters who blame it for the government's collapse. It
won 27 percent of the vote in 1999 to become Europe's most
successful far-right party. Haider dominated Austrian politics for
much of the 1990s, leading his party to a string of successes until
it won second place in 1999 and formed a government with the
People's Party. But his popularity has waned since he quit as party
chief in May 2000 after the EU and the United States imposed
diplomatic sanctions on Austria over the far-right's entry to
government. The conservatives, the Social Democrats and the Greens
all back the European Union's eastward expansion, suggesting there
will be a comfortable parliamentary majority to ratify the move
despite fierce opposition from the Freedom Party. |
