Alexander Van der Bellen, a former Green party leader running as independent, has nabbed the recent election for President of Austria. Van der Bellen, a retired economics professor, narrowly defeated Norbert Hofer, of the anti-immigrant, leftwing Eurosceptic Freedom Party.
Although the Austrian presidency is largely a ceremonial position, the results of the election are emblematic of the political situation currently taking place in Austria and reflects a dramatic change in the country's political landscape which had been dominated by two centrist parties since the end of World War II.
Van der Bellen’s victory positioned Austria as the strongest populist country in Europe today where widespread frustration over the European Union's failure to deal with the ongoing economic and migrant crises has taken center stage. The election in Austria has left a yawning division over which direction the country should now take.
Votes Too Close for Comfort
Analysts point to the migrant crisis as the catalyst for the election results. Austria followed Germany last September in opening its borders to thousands of migrants who had been trapped on route from the Middle East to central Europe via Hungary. It took only eight months for most of the Austrian population to realize their mistake and more than half voted for a Euroskeptic, anti-migrant and anti-establishment platform.
Only 31,000 (some say 61,000)votes out of more than 4.6m ballots cast separated Hofer and Van der Bellen by the time the votes were tallied. Before postal votes were counted, they were neck and neck, with Van der Bellen on 48.1% of direct votes and Hofer on 51.9.
Very few people outside the Freedom Party had even heard of Hofer before the presidential election but his name is now very much out there and Austrian voters will be watching to see if his party's populist momentum can continue to the next parliamentary elections which will take place sometime during the next two years.
Austrians have been dissatisfied with mainstream polities that were in power since WWII by the centre-left Social Democrats and conservative People’s party and both these parties were eliminated in the first round of voting last April.
While Hofer's Freedom Party campaigned against migration, Van der Bellen, whose parents spent time in a refugee camp after moving from Russia and settling in Austria, has promoted liberal migration policies. During his campaign, he told his voters that he had “…experienced how Austria rose from the ruins of World War II, caused by the madness of nationalism.”
He might have some difficulty in keeping his promise in light of the controversial new laws passed last month which are among the toughest European responses to the migrant crisis and place severe restrictions on the right of asylum. The laws reflect hardening attitudes toward migrants in Austria by giving permission for authorities to turn away most migrants at the border if a state of emergency is invoked.
Hofer, whose friendly image helped the Freedom party gain much of its popularity, does not hesitate to state his objection to continued immigration and warned during his campaign that he would not hesitate to dissolve the government if it did not act against immigration, declaring that “Islam has no place in Austria.”
The Freedom party traces its roots to the Nazi past that Austria has not totally confronted. The FPO was founded by a decorated member of the Nazi SS who served as agriculture minister after Hitler annexed Austria in 1938.
The vote in Austria is causing concern for leaders elsewhere in Europe, particularly in neighboring Germany, where the new anti-immigration Alternative for Germany is gaining strength and Greece's leftist Syriza party pointed to Hofer's strong showing as and an indication that “…. it is time that alarm bells start ringing for Europe".