In the Austrian Social Democracy, the struggle for the presidency has taken a grotesque turn. When the votes were counted at the Linz party conference last Saturday, the results were reversed. In fact, Andreas Babler is the winner, not Hans Peter Doskozil as announced in Linz. This was announced by the SPÖ office on Monday.
Doskozil, who holds the post of governor of Burgenland, immediately accepted the defeat, congratulated Babler and added that for him the topic of federal politics was over. In the evening at the party headquarters in Vienna’s Loewelstrasse, Babeler spoke without a note of triumph. Like Doskozil, he spoke of a “low point” for the SPÖ. He called for a repeated, thorough and transparent review. If it is then certain that he received the most delegate votes at the party congress, then he will take over the office and work on “the complete comeback” of the SPÖ.
The head of the election commission stated in the afternoon that the error had occurred at the party conference when transferring the counted votes into an Excel spreadsheet. “The result was reversed.” The fact that there was a recount on Monday at all was due to coincidence. One vote was missing from the result that was initially officially announced. It was found and was invalid. At the same time, however, it was also discovered that the voices had been assigned incorrectly. According to the results now available, Doskozil received 280 votes, while Babeler received 317.
The party congress was preceded by a power struggle that had been smoldering for years and erupted openly in March, initially between Doskozil and the previous SPÖ leader Pamela Rendi-Wagner. The two agreed on a member survey, in which Babler also took part, as mayor of the provincial town of Traiskirchen, a newcomer to federal politics. Doskozil came only very slightly ahead of Babler and Rendi-Wagner, who withdrew from politics. After the counting span, Doskozil predicted that there would now be “malice and ridicule”. This is exactly how the political competition reacted.
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