Austria far-right party head resigns after infighting
Norbert Hofer, the leader of Austria's far-right Freedom Party (FPOe), announced his resignation Tuesday after weeks of infighting and tension with party colleague and former Interior Minister Herbert Kickl.
"My own journey at the helm of the FPOe is ending
today," Hofer said in an FPOe press release but clarified that he will
keep his position as one of the deputy presidents of parliament until the next
general election, currently scheduled for 2024.
Hofer has a mild-mannered public image and was seen as
representing a more moderate wing within the anti-migration FPOe, which has
been known to use Islamophobic rhetoric and imagery.
Hofer had for months been at loggerheads with Kickl, the
party's longterm ideologue who has been behind some of the FPOe's most
trenchant campaigns.
Hofer has walked with a cane since a 2003 paraglider
accident and announced his resignation following three weeks of treatment for
his old injuries at a physical rehabilitation centre.
When the tabloid Oesterreich asked Hofer Tuesday if his
resignation was also partially in response to differences of opinion with
Kickl, he replied: "Yes, of course. I won't be told every day that I am
out of place."
The two politicians had differing approaches to the
coronavirus pandemic.
Hofer was notable in the FPOe caucus for wearing the FFP2
face mask required in parliament, while Kickl made a point of not doing so and
made fiery addresses to anti-lockdown demonstrations.
In 2016 Hofer narrowly failed in his bid to become the first
far-right president of an EU member state, losing to Alexander Van der Bellen
by some 31,000 votes.
He took over as head of the party in 2019 when
Heinz-Christian Strache, then Austria's Vice Chancellor, was forced to resign
after secretly recorded footage in a luxury villa in Ibiza showed him offering
a woman posing as the niece of a Russian oligarch state contracts in exchange
for campaign help for the FPOe.
The so-called "Ibiza-gate" scandal brought down
the first coalition headed by Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, an alliance of his
centre-right People's Party (OeVP) and the FPOe.
"The time after Ibiza wasn't easy," Hofer said in
his statement, adding that it had been "a difficult job to build the party
back up again" after the coalition collapsed.
"In the last few months it has been possible to
stabilise the party," he said, pointing to improved recent performance in
the polls where it has scored as high as 20 percent.
The party won just over 16 percent in the last national
elections in 2019.
Comments
Post a Comment