The outgoing mayor of Linz, Klaus Luger, who began his political career in the Communist Student Association (KSV), moved from the bottom left to the top right in the course of his career – like many Social Democrats. He was even accused of collaborating with a Turkish association that was said to be close to the fascist Grey Wolves. He even resigned from all offices against party chairman Andreas Babler while he was in free fall.
Linz. The political system in Austria’s third-largest city, the Upper Austrian capital Linz, has recently been in great turmoil. First, the director of the Bruckner House and artistic director of the Linz event company LIVA, Dietmar Kerschbaum, was dismissed without notice. He is accused of various things, such as conducting self-dealing. Kerschbaum had held these positions since 2017. Then it emerged that the mayor of Linz, Klaus Luger of the SPÖ, had helped things along a little so that his preferred candidate at the time, Kerschbaum, got the job. When Luger found out that the passing on of hearing questions to Kerschbaum could become public, he is said to have even ordered investigations into where the leak was.
From bottom left to top right
Three days after Linz Mayor Klaus Luger (SPÖ) admitted to having passed on “general questions” to his preferred candidate for the advertised position of artistic director of the Linz Event Company (LIVA) and the Brucknerhaus directorate before the hearing in 2017, he has been stripped of all his functions and offices since Friday. It was a resignation in several acts.
First, the Linz SPÖ delivered a lesson in political ignorance and arrogance. At a meeting in Langenlois, Lugner was given 100 percent confidence, even though he himself had already admitted his intolerable misdeeds. Just a few days later, Luger resigned as city party leader and finally as mayor on Friday. In Linz, the mayor is directly elected, so there will be new elections for this office this autumn.
Luger, who began his political career in the Communist Student Association (KSV), moved from the bottom left to the top right over the course of his career – like many Social Democrats. As mayor, he was even accused of collaborating with a Turkish organization that was said to be close to the fascist Grey Wolves.
In the internal party dispute over the party chairmanship, the mayor of Linz had positioned himself against the incumbent chairman Andreas Babler and had spoken out in favor of the Burgenland SP regional emperor Hans-Peter Doskozil. Now he was vehemently urged by federal party chairman Babler to resign from all political functions. But even as he was free-falling from all offices, Luger still took a stand against Babler and said as he left that the latter’s call for his resignation had played no role at all in his deliberations.
Babler doesn’t have it easy with his long-serving apparatchiks. He hits a brick wall with the district head of the 22nd district, Ernst Newrivy, who is accused of having exploited internal knowledge of impending increases in value when purchasing an allotment plot (the presumption of innocence applies). The latter is clinging to his chair despite investigations by the public prosecutor’s office.
Babler wants image as a “clean party”
Babler wants to position “his new SPÖ” as a clean party. However, cronyism is commonplace, particularly in the political centers of power of the Social Democrats such as Linz and Vienna. From time to time, officials and politicians are exposed and come into conflict with criminal law. Klaus Luger, who has publicly admitted his crime, could also make the acquaintance of the Economic and Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, which is currently investigating whether there is any initial suspicion. Andreas Babler himself probably does not like to be reminded that when he was elected mayor of Traiskirchen, he held the office of head of department and mayor in parallel for a while and also received money for both functions. Although this was not relevant from a criminal law perspective, when it became known to the wider public it created such a skewed image that he immediately gave up his office as head of department.
Meanwhile, the turbulence in the SPÖ continues. The second President of the National Council, Doris Bures, a powerful Viennese functionary from the “Liesinger Party” of former Chancellor Werner Faymann, describes Babler’s election program, which had just been approved by the party presidium, as “frivolous”. She says it lacks a realistic political approach to how one wants to govern and the program gets lost in too many details.
A party that wants to provide the future Federal Chancellor looks different.
