AUSTRIA'S RIGHTWING PARTIES JOIN FORCES

UNCLAS VIENNA 001594 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PGOV PREL AU SUBJECT: AUSTRIA'S RIGHTWING PARTIES JOIN FORCES REF: VIENNA 1337 ¶1. (U) Summary: The rightwing Freedom Party (FPO) and the Carinthia branch of the Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZO - an FPO splinter party) announced December 16 that they had agreed to join forces. The move will bolster the FPO, which has been attracting a growing number of voters with its anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim campaign rhetoric. It will also likely bring about the demise of the BZO as a national party. It will not, we believe, cause the fall of the ruling coalition government. End Summary. A Joining of Forces -------------- ¶2. (U) National FPO leader Heinz-Christian Strache and Uwe Scheuch, head of the BZO's Carinthia branch, announced December 16 that they had agreed to join forces. Under the agreement, members of the Carinthia BZO will vote with the FPO at the national level in parliament, a model Strache and Scheuch said was based on the CDU-CSU alliance in Germany. The Carinthian BZO, by far the party's strongest provincial branch, will now be called the Freedom Party of Carinthia. ¶3. (U) The move ended, at least in part, years of acrimony between the FPO and the BZO, an FPO splinter party. Joerg Haider, the immigrant-bashing populist leader who died in a 2008 car wreck, left the FPO in 2005 and founded the BZO. Under Haider's leadership, the BZO garnered a surprising 11 percent of the vote in the 2008 national elections, in which the FPO drew 18 percent. But since Haider's death the party has fared miserably in provincial elections outside of Carinthia, where it dominates, and has fallen below 4 percent in national polls. BZO Unlikely to Survive -------------- ¶4. (SBU) Only four of the seven Carinthian BZO MPs have agreed to join the FPO alliance, one fewer than the minimum required to form a parliamentary club (which would be eligible for 1.1 million Euros in public funding). One of the holdouts is Josef Bucher, leader of the national BZO. Bucher has tried to distinguish the BZO from the FPO by avoiding the FPO's harsh anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim rhetoric and adopting a less socially conservative, more economically "liberal" (limited government, pro-free market) platform (reftel). But he failed to win the support of his Carinthian colleagues. Bucher has pledged to continue his course, and it is doubtful that the BZO can survive without its Carinthian base. A wide range of political observers predict the party will disappear at the national level over the next few years. Comment: Governing Coalition Will Hold -------------- ¶5. (SBU) This political merger strengthens the FPO, which had already demonstrated in provincial elections that it is a growing force. The merger will also bring about the demise of the BZO as a national party. We do not believe, however, that the merger will bring down the coalition government. Some have speculated that the conservative OVP might be encouraged to call early elections in the hopes of forming a government with the FPO. Having been burned in 2008 after bringing down the previous government, however, the OVP is unlikely to trade its relatively stable SPO alliance for a coalition with the erratic, rabblerousing FPO.