The prodigy leaves Austrian politics – and leaves the country’s political landscape like a bombing ruin. Now Sebastian Kurz (35) will be a diaper change worker – he claims.
The comments expresses the writer’s opinions.
It exploded like a bomb when the Chancellor took off his hat in October and left. The helm was left to the foreign minister, but Kurz himself wanted to continue as party chairman and leader of the ÖVP in parliament.
Many claimed that he had only taken a step to the side, so that Alexander Schallenberg could take care of the chancellor’s stool while Sebastian Kurz had time to clean up his affairs with the police and prosecutors.
The man is charged with corruption and abuse of power, the evidence is extensive – and the prospect of conviction is dangerous.
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The chairman leaves
Yesterday morning, Sebastian Kurz took the podium in Vienna and declared that he was resigning from all his political posts. It was Sunday’s birth of a son – his firstborn – that had made the 35-year-old decide to change his way of life, he said.
The last few years have been terrific. He became Secretary of State as a 24-year-old, Secretary of State as a 27-year-old and Chancellor when he turned 31. Every morning he had got up early to tackle all the urgent tasks that awaited. Yes, sometimes he had obviously been injured for making the wrong decision. But by and large, Kurz believes he can be more than proud of his efforts for the fatherland.
“I am neither a saint nor a criminal,” said Sebastian Kurz rudely – as he had been in Norway on a course for colleagues who have to explain away a commuter apartment.
He stressed his innocence and assured that all accusations will be refuted – when the case only comes up in court. (He is looking forward.)
The Chancellor is leaving as well
A few hours after Kurz had finished, it was Alexander Schallenberg’s turn to visit the microphones to announce his own resignation as Chancellor. He had never really intended to stay in office for very long, and now he had – after two months as head of government – speculated that the Federal Chancellor really MUST also be party chairman. And if there’s something Alexander Schallenberg does not want to be, it’s just that.
Now the alarm went off in earnest.
One would rather be a diaper change worker and the other would not be chairman at any cost. This is gurgling. The commentators are already mingling with speculation about what may have taken place behind the scenes.
Do former and current chancellors know of more disasters coming soon? Could there be more legal inconvenience going on – investigation of things that no one has known about until now? New and grotesque revelations by Sebastian Kurz and the clique around him?
Here you can read more comments by Asbjørn Svarstad
Bought good review
The snowballs began to roll when the public prosecutor with responsibility for fighting corruption got hold of over 300,000 chat messages from 2016 between Kurz and a narrower circle of accomplices. One was on the budget in the Ministry of Justice, and could thus control the state’s spending on the purchase of advertising space in various media.
He and a couple of others agreed with the brothers behind “Österreich” that their media group would receive large sums of money for advertisements. In return, the magazine guaranteed to bring regular reports to put Kurz in a favorable light to voters. It was also agreed that the ministry would pay for falsified opinion polls, which were published in the group’s various media. Of course, they showed that Sebastian Kurz’s popularity had completely waned – and were also used as an argument to make him party chairman.
From being a dark blue and clearly conservative party – with a lot of newcomers and white men at the helm – he turned it into a turquoise and youthful Kurz party with himself as a brilliant guru. Nobody Does It Better.
At first he became chancellor himself. Later, he made sure that the others in the inner circle around him were rewarded with fat legs in the form of tailor-made jobs with high wages and a lot of power.
Delivered the evidence
One of them managed to store all the messages, where the various twists and turns were agreed, on an electronic diary that the investigator found during a search of his home. Austrian media have since gassed themselves in excerpts from the prime minister’s, to put it mildly, fresh vocabulary – and also his frayed relationship to regulations and paragraphs.
Although everyone in the party declared their support for Sebastian Kurz, the alleged left-wing extremist lawyers cursed the persecution of an honest and hard-working politician and hoped that a clean-shaven party chairman would soon return as acquitted and clean-shaven, so it soon began to squeak.
More and more sizes around the country reported a budding uprising in the electorate. Think about whether the allegations are correct – imagine that an Austrian court finds the chairman guilty – yes, even sends him to prison. Could it perhaps be wise to consider a fresh start – a future completely without Sebastian Kurz?
Also read: Austrian wolf in sheep’s clothing?
Voter Escape
At the same time, opinion polls show that three quarters of Austrians have lost faith that the prodigy’s halo is real – and otherwise deeply tired of politicians who promise gold and green forests – but use their positions to abuse power and squeeze the system for money.
Kurz’s first government was a coalition with the right-wing populist Freedom Party (FPÖ), which disbanded after it released footage of the party chairman intoxicated with the supposedly powerful niece of a Russian oligarch. Later, he forged a new coalition with the Green Party.
His method was always to divide and rule. No post-war chancellor, like Kurz, has managed to polarize Austrian society more strongly. He divides the political landscape into friends and enemies – and the latter must be fought by all means.
The case with the ads may be the most serious for Sebastian Kurz.
Should he be convicted, there is talk of gross corruption – in addition to abuse of power, false explanation and a few other cases. That way he does not get away with a large fine or a few hours of community service.
Comeback?
No one doubts that Kurz is a rarely skilled power politician and also an oratorical gift. Critics claim that he also has an ego the size of the Alps and that there can be no question of Sebastian Kurz leaving politics for good – because in recent months the prodigy has been subjected to criticism of a type he has never before got to feel on your own body.
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In five years he will be 40 years old, may have put the sentence of a “political verdict” behind him – and is ready to take back the chancellor’s office in Vienna. There are probably not many Austrians who today would put their money on such a development.
But who knows? This is after all the Sound-of-music country. So anything is possible.
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