FREEDOM PARTY: NEW LEADER, TRIED-AND-TRUE THEMES

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 VIENNA 001401

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SUBJECT: FREEDOM PARTY: NEW LEADER, TRIED-AND-TRUE THEMES

REFS: A) VIENNA 738 B) VIENNA 739 C) VIENNA 945

D) VIENNA 1101 E) VIENNA 1298

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1. (SBU) SUMMARY: Freedom Party (FPO) delegates elected
Vienna state chairman Heinz Christian Strache as new FPO
national chair at a special convention in Salzburg April

23. Strache, blasting the founder of the FPO spinoff
party BZO (Alliance Future Austria),Joerg Haider, as a
betrayer, pledged to consolidate and jump-start the
national FPO. The new party leader sounded traditional
Freedom Party themes, such as opposition to immigration
and Turkish EU membership, skepticism about the planned
purchase of Eurofighter interceptors and the importance
of maintaining Austria's official neutrality. However,
despite their bitterness toward the breakaway BZO, most
of the handful of parliamentarians who stayed loyal to
the FPO will still consider voting with the OVP-BZO
coalition on a case-by-case basis. The majority for the
current government seems a bit more solid as a result,
reducing somewhat the likelihood of early elections.
Still, the quarrels between the two right-leaning
splinter parties are bound to produce continued
volatility, with unpredictable consequences for the
stability of the government coalition. End summary.


2. (SBU) One week after the founding of the FPO spin-off
BZO (ref D),Freedom Party stalwarts also chose Salzburg
as the venue for a special party convention to elect a
new leadership and shore up the party's sagging fortunes.
Delegates pinned their hopes on Vienna state chairman
Heinz Christian Strache (35),a youthful, articulate
hardliner who had emerged as Haider's major intra-party
competitor in the weeks leading up to the FPO split. As
the sole candidate for party chairman, Strache received
91 percent of the 500-plus delegates' votes.


3. (SBU) Strache accused BZO leader Haider of having
betrayed the values and spirit of the FPO in recent years
with opportunistic "zig-zag" politics. He urged
delegates to unite and give new momentum to the party.
Returning to tried-and-true Freedom Party themes, Strache
stressed that this FPO stood for opposition to
immigration and to Turkish EU membership, closer
monitoring of Islamic fundamentalism and an "Austria
first" patriotism. He advocated a more assertive stand
toward the EU and stressed the importance of upholding
Austria's official neutrality. Strache also roundly
rejected the still controversial 2002 decision (by the
first OVP-FPO cabinet) to purchase Eurofighter
interceptors for the Austrian army.


4. (SBU) Only 4 out of the 18 members of the FPO caucus
attended the convention, nourishing speculation that
Strache would not gather enough support to call the
government's majority in Parliament into question. This
majority now depends on support from Chancellor
Schuessel's People's Party (OVP),the BZO and self-
declared "independent" FPO legislators. The latter have
stated they will support legislation introduced by the
OVP-BZO coalition on a case-by-case basis. In fact, they
appear largely willing to vote with the government,
rather than bring it down by siding with the Social
Democrats and Greens. On April 27 all but one of the FPO-
loyal MPs voted against an opposition motion to start a
parliamentary investigation of the Eurofighter deal.


5. (SBU) Meanwhile, two Upper House MPs caused a national
uproar with recent statements that seriously dented the
image of both parties. Siegfried Kampl of the Carinthian
BZO called 1945 Wehrmacht deserters "murderers of their
comrades" and complained of "persecutions" of Nazi Party
members in the postwar period. The BZO leadership
announced his resignation from the upper house on April

28. John Gudenus, a Vienna FPO rightist, unleashed
another firestorm when he cast doubt on the existence of
Nazi gas chambers. Strache forced him to quit the FPO,
but Gudenus has yet to surrender his Upper House seat.


6. (SBU) COMMENT: Judging from his convention speech, new
FPO leader Strache is seeking to re-position his party
firmly on the right of Austria's political spectrum.
Strache faces a dual challenge in uniting the party and
asserting his own leadership, however. Two state
chapters (Vorarlberg and Upper Austria) have so far
declared themselves "independent" of the national party,
one FPO chapter (Vienna) has split between FPO and BZO
sympathizers, while the single strongest FPO group,
Carinthia, has gone over en masse to Carinthian Governor
Joerg Haider's new BZO. Moreover, the confusing strategy
by FPO-loyal MPs -- expressing outrage over the new OVP-
BZO coalition arrangement while continuing to vote with
the center-right government -- has already undercut FPO
credibility. Clearly, neither of Austria's two right-
wing parties is in shape to contest elections now, giving
their parliamentary representatives every reason to work
together, even as unresolved questions about party
subsidies and debts continue to drive them apart.

Brown