By Francois Murphy
VIENNA (Reuters) – He’s abrasive, provocative and has one of many lowest approval scores amongst high Austrian politicians, however far-right chief Herbert Kickl remains to be the person to beat in Sunday’s parliamentary election, which has at occasions resembled a referendum on him.
“Kickl here, Kickl there, Kickl everywhere,” he joked at a sometimes rowdy, beer-filled rally in February.
Weeks earlier Chancellor Karl Nehammer framed the election as a selection “between him and me”, at a conservative Individuals’s Social gathering (OVP) assembly that includes prolonged video footage of Kickl.
“I don’t know if I should feel more honoured or stalked!” Kickl mentioned.
Such barbs punctuate Kickl’s withering tirades in opposition to the unpopular OVP-Greens coalition authorities, serving to make him arguably probably the most entertaining speaker in parliament.
He and his Freedom Social gathering (FPO) have the wind at their backs. The economic system is poised to shrink for a second 12 months operating and inflation has remained caught above the European Union common.
Polls have lengthy proven the Islam-critical FPO, which needs harder immigration legal guidelines, main a two-horse race with the OVP. The winner might want to type a coalition to manipulate.
Kickl is loathed by different occasion leaders, who’ve vowed to not work underneath him. He has proven no indication he may emulate Dutch nationalist Geert Wilders, who in March stepped apart so a authorities may type after his occasion received in 2023.
The FPO’s lead is now wafer skinny, and the OVP has stepped up its depictions of Kickl, an ally of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, as an extremist menace to safety and democracy.
“It’s impossible to form a government with someone who adores conspiracy theories, who describes the WHO, the World Health Organization, as the next world government and the economic forum in Davos as preparation for global domination,” Nehammer mentioned this month.
Nehammer has left the door open to working with the FPO with out Kickl. The events, which overlap on immigration coverage and chopping taxes, have been in coalition from 2017 till 2019, when Kickl’s predecessor Heinz-Christian Strache was proven in a sting video providing to repair state contracts.
Kickl has lengthy been a central determine within the FPO, however he recurrently lands on the backside of an OGM survey for information company APA of main politicians’ recognition. Solely the departing speaker of parliament Wolfgang Sobotka fares worse.
Kickl has solid himself as the long run “Volkskanzler”, or individuals’s chancellor – a time period the Nazis used for Adolf Hitler, although others have additionally used it.
In 2010, Kickl mentioned he opposed deeming Hitler’s Waffen-SS “collectively guilty” for struggle crimes. The FPO’s first chief in 1955 had been a senior SS officer and a Nazi minister.
Kickl and the FPO oppose sanctions in opposition to Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, saying it violates Austria’s neutrality.
He has embraced conspiracy theories, claiming the de-worming agent ivermectin is efficient in opposition to COVID-19, as did former U.S. President Donald Trump.
But his marketing campaign in opposition to coronavirus restrictions like lockdowns and vaccine mandates helped revive the occasion’s fortunes after it crashed out of presidency in Austria, which had the best fee of vaccine holdouts within the EU.
‘CLEAR AND VERY FOCUSED STRATEGIST’
Kickl was inside minister and Nehammer a senior OVP official throughout a coalition between their events that imploded in 2019.
After the sting video, then-Chancellor Sebastian Kurz had Kickl dismissed as inside minister. Nehammer subsequently turned inside minister, however when a 2020 lethal jihadist assault in Vienna revealed severe failings on the home intelligence company Nehammer oversaw, he blamed Kickl.
That was a reference to a 2018 police raid of the company’s places of work that opponents say Kickl orchestrated to purge it of OVP loyalists.
Kickl denies that, however President Alexander Van der Bellen, who will oversee the formation of the following authorities, has criticised the FPO chief for the raid and hinted he wouldn’t let him turn out to be chancellor.
Kickl cuts a much more severe determine than predecessors like Strache and Joerg Haider. He shuns events and has competed in Ironman-style ultra-triathlons.
“He is a very, very clear and very focused strategist, and as we see every day he is very much on the attack and even aggressive,” political analyst Thomas Hofer mentioned.
