The former chancellor resigns from all posts. Austria in chaos: he also leaves his successor
Everything that the “child prodigy” touched, he broke. First the three big Austrian parties with which he ruled and which he smashed, social democrats, ultra-right and green. Eventually Sebastian Kurz also destroyed the only thing he had left intact, namely himself and his popularity. And now the country is languishing in chaos, because his successor, Alexander Schallenberg, who took office in early October after his resignation, also took a step back yesterday. It’s Kurz’s curse, some political scientist in Vienna jokes.
In fact, from rising star of the European conservatives, foreign minister at 27, party leader at 30 and chancellor at 31, the popular turned out to be a meteor. A lot of light at the beginning and a lot of smoke over time: in just four years as head of government, he tarnished his career until he retired from everything, now that he is 35. “I leave every political position and in the party” Kurz said, “with the birth of my son I changed priorities.” Two months ago he was forced to resign his mandate as chancellor, overwhelmed by accusations of corruption: he would have paid the media to be sponsored with pumped-up polls and thus scale the party to take control, in 2017. A system of favors that has not come a long way, unmasked by the Austrian prosecutor while investigating another dirty business: the Ibiza scandal, when his former deputy, the nationalist Strache, got caught promising public contracts in exchange for money for his party.
And so, as the youngest leader on the planet, the “Wunderkind” is now the youngest retiree on the planet. And to say that he had managed to seduce the country, presenting himself as the new man who had revived the popular party by taking it from 20% to just under 40, changing its face, age and even color (from black to blue hope). He had tried to put a lot of distance between the unforgettable image of himself aboard the “Geil o ‘Mobil”, the “cool car” loaded with girls in skimpy clothes that he carried around in his early years in the Övp, and the impression of the inflexible statesman in elegant imperial blue suit he gave once elected. Four years ago, it was mainly the elderly and middle-educated classes who live in the provinces who voted for it. He presented himself as the “ideal grandson”. It has intercepted the favorable wind, when populism and nationalism were growing in Europe, but it did not set the sails well. He set up an extraordinary consensus machine: between party and chancellor it is said that he gathered over 80 people who took care of the media, social networks and polls for him.
Never before, when everything is over, does the simulacrum of a politician more marketing than substance appear: he wanted to change Europe by modernizing Austria, but he never put his hand to essential reforms: pensions, taxation, education. Even within the EU Kurz was a divisive figure, refusing to welcome migrants, siding with countries frugal on the rigor of accounts and on the Next Generation EU. Even on the management of Covid and on vaccines he messed up, accusing Brussels of penalizing Austria on the doses, then forced to a sensational reverse.
His era ends with a disastrous fall. The current Minister of the Interior, Karl Nehammer, would be in the running in place of the dolphin Schallenberg. He will have to deal with the old guard of the Austrian conservatives, who can’t wait to reset the liberal and youthful turn impressed on the party by the former leader. If they win, 40-year-old Karoline Edtstadler, current Minister for European Affairs, is given pole: she would become the first Bundeskanzlerin in Vienna. But after the Kaiser, however, only chaos reigns in Vienna.
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