Fate of Austria's right wing in balance

Austrians chose from a handful of parties in parliamentary elections today after a lacklustre campaign focused largely on who would pick up the disaffected voters of right-wing Joerg Haider, whose popularity has plummeted in recent months.

The race between the conservative People’s Party of Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel and the opposition Social Democrats, led by Alfred Gusenbauer, was too close to call, according to the latest opinion polls.

Each party had about 37%, according to an average made of polls released on Friday by four Austrian newspapers.

After months of infighting that left Haider’s party without most of its moderates, Haider’s party, which took 27% of the vote in the 1999 elections, stands to lose heavily, but could still be kingmaker in the next government.

Recent surveys show the party will win around 11% to 13% of the vote.

The fourth main party, the Greens, was polling at about 12 percent.

Polls opened at 7am (6am Irish time) and were to close 10 hours later, when first unofficial results were expected, with official results likely at 7.30pm (6.30pm Irish time).

With both of the strongest parties bound to fall short of an absolute majority, either the Greens or Haider’s party are left in key possible support roles.

The most likely scenarios were a renewed People’s Party-Freedom Party coalition, an alliance of the Socialists and the Green Party, or a “Grand Coalition” of the Socialists and the People’s Party – the constellation in power up to late 1999, when the People’s Party turned to Haider after its talks with the Socialists collapsed.

But even if Schuessel again joins with the Freedom Party, its influence will be only a shadow of what it was a little more than two years ago – a development that even former supporters and allies blame Haider for.

When Haider’s party came to power in 1999, the European Union imposed seven months of diplomatic sanctions on Austria, alarmed by then-party leader Haider’s anti-foreigner stance, veiled slights of Jews and open admiration for some of Adolf Hitler’s policies.

Israel recalled its ambassador and has not yet returned him.

But EU officials now concede that sanctions were a mistake that only strengthened Haider among those convinced that the rest of the world was against them and that Austria was being punished for making a democratic choice.

The Freedom Party’s success turned out to be the harbinger of a trend in Europe that saw right-wingers and anti-immigration mavericks make gains in France, the Netherlands, Denmark and elsewhere.

Some 5.9 million Austrians are eligible to vote in the elections for the 183-seat national parliament.