With the leadership vote due on 3 June, the three most promising candidates to become the new leader of the social democrat SPÖ, currently in opposition, have entered the hot phase of getting party member backing.
In May, the Social Democrats – who historically governed Austria or led the opposition – decided to hold a leadership race. The hitherto party chief Pamela Rendi-Wagner had been weakened by week-long jabs from the party’s conservative wing.
On 3 June, the party’s 140,000 members will get to decide who shall lead the party going forward – and spearhead efforts to win back the Chancellorship in autumn 2024.
The conservative contender and instigator of the leadership race is Hans-Peter Doksozil, a migration hardliner whose state has been the “frontline” of migration flows into Austria.
Small-town mayor Andreas Babler, on the other hand, comes from the far-left of the party – a surprise candidate with significant momentum, espousing ideas such as equitable pay, reducing working hours, equality of the sexes, and the social component of climate change.
“We are not supplicants when we fight for our planet,” he said Wednesday night when presenting his programme. Stemming from a working-class background, Babler favours the legal right to medical support, amongst other rights, but not to a minimum wage.
Rendi-Wagner, the party’s first-ever female chief, is the third contender in the leadership race. Busy with her professional obligations – as party chief and foreign policy spokesperson – she is not expected to campaign as a candidate but instead looking to be seen as a leader.
The showdown between the three candidates, who may well become Austria’s chancellor for the second half of the decade, will not be as public as some had hoped.
Doksozil rejected a three-way public hearing, which resulted in Rendi-Wagner pulling out too.
(Nikolaus J. Kurmayer | EURACTIV.de)
Source: euractiv.com
