Austria - 2002 Election National Council
Austria is a multiparty parliamentary democracy in which constitutional power is shared between the popularly elected President and the 183-member Parliament. Citizens choose their President and representatives in periodic, free, and fair multiparty elections. In 1998 President Thomas Klestil of the Austrian People's Party (OVP) was elected to a 6-year term. In parliamentary elections in November, the OVP received a plurality and began negotiations with the other parties to form a government. The judiciary is independent. The Constitution provides citizens with the right to change their government peacefully, and citizens exercised this right in practice through periodic, free, and fair elections held on the basis of universal suffrage.
Austrian voters went to the polls on Sunday, 24 November 2002, after Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel called for elections a year before the government's official term ends. In September 2002 the crisis in the Freedom Party escalated. Internal party disputes led to a split and formation of a new party headed by Haider, the Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZÖ). At the FPÖ's party congress in Knittelfeld, the long-divided party broke into two wings: a more liberal wing supportive of then-FPÖ leader Susanne Riess-Passer and the followers of party-leader Haider. Four Freedom Party ministers, including Riess-Passer, resigned from their posts in the government. Chancellor Schüssel was forced to call for new elections.
Observers were speculating whether Austria will return to a coalition of the two main parties that determined post-war politics there: The conservative People's Party (ÖVP) and the Social Democrats (SPÖ). The People's Party and the Social Democratic Party ruled the country together for the 12 years before the surprising success of the right-wing populist Freedom Party (FPÖ) in the 1999 elections. Although the Social Democrats garnered 33.2 percent of the votes in 1999, the party was unable to find a coalition partner. Since then the ÖVP and the FPÖ, each of which brought in 26.9 percent of Austrians' votes, have been ruling the country in an unstable coalition.
National elections were held 24 November 2002 in which the OVP won 79 seats in Parliament, the Social Democrats (SPO), 69, the FPO, 18, and the Green Party, 17. The conservative People's Party of Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel received 42 percent of the vote. The Social Democrats were second with about 37 percent and the Freedom Party was third. The Greens Party was fourth at about nine percent. At year's end, the parties were negotiating on forming a Government. There were 63 women in the 183-seat National Assembly and 13 in the 62-member Federal Assembly.
Austrian extreme-rightist politician Joerg Haider said he intended to resign as a state governor, and might withdraw from politics, following his Freedom Party's poor performance in Sunday's parliamentary elections. Haider told an Austrian radio interviewer he was "deeply hurt" by what he called his party's "terrible" performance in Sunday's election. Support for the party was reduced by two-thirds, to just 10 percent. Although he was not technically the leader of the Freedom Party, his influence was substantial. During the campaign Haider aroused controversy by travelling to Iraq to meet with Saddam Hussein.
He told the radio station of Carinthia, where he is governor, that he has had his fill of politics. Haider has been governor since 1999 when he won more than 42 percent of the vote. His previous term as governor ended in 1991 when he was voted out of office after praising the employment policies of Adolf Hitler. Haider had offered to resign before, but always changed his mind at the request of party leaders. Asked if he might reconsider his decision this time, he said, "that would be difficult". A former senior official of the Freedom Party, Peter Westenthaler, said it is time for the party to move to a post-Haider era. Westenthaler had resigned his leadership post in September in a dispute with Haider.
The second Schuessel government -- a coalition between the Austrian People's Party (OVP) and the Freedom Party (FPO) in office since February 2003 -- has continued the comprehensive economic reform program Schuessel had begun in 2000. The government's aim was to streamline government, create a more competitive business environment, and further strengthen Austria's attractiveness as a location for investment. According to many observers, in comparison to other EU member states, Austria made a major policy shift in recent years by pursuing a balanced budget, pension and health care system reform; creating financial market supervision and competition policy bodies; and implementing a corporate tax cut in 2005.
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