Austria had national elections today. Maybe not the most important political thing world wide, but pretty important for Austrians, as you can guess.
And I’m shocked. I’m absolutely speechless. I want somebody to hold me and tell me that it’s going to be alright. Even if it won’t be.
Austria has four five parties, who are actually in government
- SPÖ – Social Democrats (red party, middle-left)
- ÖVP – People’s Party (black party, middle-right)
- Grüne – Greens (green party, left)
- FPÖ – Freedom Party (blue party, right)
and more or less the same: - BZÖ – Alliance for the Future of Austria (orange party, right)
We’ve also some smaller parties, who regularly try to get into government (Communist Party, Liberal Forum) and fail to get the necessary 4% and this time there were 3 more parties, who’ve just formed and tried the same thing on a national basis and four more, who only could be elected in a few parts of Austria.
That’s a total of 14 parties. An Austrian record and definitely remarkable.
Anyway, the actual players here are the five big parties I mentioned above.
Ever since 1945, the reds and the blacks made up the government (mostly together, sometimes alone and for four years in the 80s, the reds and the blues made up a coalition), while the other parties were in opposition (the greens weren’t founded until 1986 and the oranges until 2005).
Things changed in 1999, when the blue party suddenly became strong enough (with about 27% of votes) to form a coalition with the blacks. Everything went pretty bad pretty fast and we had elections after three years – with other percentages, but the same result: a coalition between black and blue.
The black party, suddenly very, very strong, started to destroy the blue party. Eventually, this resulted in a split in the blue party into the blue party and the orange party, led by Jörg Haider (whom you may have heard of). Which made for the curious situation of a party being in government, which was never elected. [Which I personally thought not legal and there should have been new elections right away.]
New elections were held and in 2006 the black and the red party entered in a grand coalition once more, as the blue party had lost a lot of points and the orange party barely made it into government at all.
Shortly before this summer, this coalition crashed. The black party called for new elections and today, we had them.
And the results, not finalised yet, are as follows:
SPÖ (red party): 29.7% (58 seats)
ÖVP (black party): 25.6% (50 seats)
FPÖ (blue party): 18% (35 seats)
BZÖ (orange party): 11% (21 seats)
Greens: 9.8% (19 seats)
The rest is for the other parties. (No seats)
The results will be finalised next week, when the votes by the people voting by mail will be counted. It’s basically cemented, but what still could change is that the green party could move ahead of the oranges and probably get one more seat in government, taken from the blue party.
Now, I make it no secret that I’m with the green party. And obviously, the results were disappointing. But what’s really, really scary – if the blue party and the orange party hadn’t split, they would be the second strongest party in Austria.
And goddammit, they’re basically neo-nazis. I’m in no way suggesting that all the voters are neo-nazis, because mostly they get voted by people, who are under-educated and just don’t know better. But the party leaders definitely are.
Don’t people ever learn? I mean, usually, the blue and the orange party get the protest voters. But they just were in government! And it sucked! And it didn’t work! AND HOLY FUCKING SHIT! DID THEY MISS THE SECOND WORLD WAR, WHERE IT COULD BE SEEN THAT GETTING A CERTAIN GROUP OF PEOPLE OUT OF THE COUNTRY DOESN’T HELP????!!!!
I’m sorry for the punctuation abuse, but I just can’t cope with this. I don’t understand. I really don’t. How the fuck is this possible? Is there an emoticon for bewilderment? Shock? Imagine it here.
The most likely results from this election: Another red-black coalition (which just failed) or a black-orange-blue coalition (which failed 2 years ago). This is disgusting and very frightening (like most politics).
And another thing that gets me: only about 71% of Austrians voted (what is it with you 29% anyway? That is not okay!).
And a lot of people went from voting blue/orange to voting green and the other way round. How is that possible? How can you go from one end of the spectrum to the next? Don’t people vote for convictions, political points of view, politics? [I know that it’s an illusion to think that people actually listen to what the parties suggest. But it should be that way…]
I don’t know what else I can say. I’m disconcerted, to say the least. This will be awful.
kalafudra's Stuff 
This is the first time I’ve ever heard any details about Austrian politics(not counting World War I :) ) and a few comments leap to mind. In reverse order:
1) Are extreme jumps that unexpected? Isn’t that what happens when you suddenly realize someone sucks? Faith of the convert, and all that…
2) 71% would be QUITE good by Indian standards. Is that uncommonly low?
3) Having no details whatsoever, black and red seems like an “acceptable” solution, and going by the numbers, likely as well. (The thumb rule being, stability of a coalition is inversely proportionate to number of participants, especially when they all have fairly decent stakes). Or isn’t it?
4) Again, 14 is pretty low by our standards. Every tiny state has a few local parties that manage some non-negligible share of the vote. Of course, India’s a totally different case, with a whole bunch of completely disparate cultures, but still.
5) What’s with the colours? :) Don’t you use names at all? As in, is that really how you talk about them, or are you just being abstract for our convenience?
To answer your questions:
1) In Austria, yes, extreme jumps are unexpected. Usually, it’s really boring because the numbers more or less stay the same.
2) I know, compared with international standards, 71% is pretty good. In Austria, the last election was at the until then all-time low of 78%. This time, it’s only 71%. So, very low for our usual standards.
3) Well, in this case, I absolutely agree with you. This would be the best option right now. [From my point of view, that is.] Generally speaking, they couldn’t work together this past two years and if there’s no huge changes made, they won’t be able to do so now.
But everything is better than the blue and/or the orange party in government. They’re bad enough in opposition.
4) You have to factor in how small Austria is – we have slightly more than 8 mio inhabitants. 14 parties is a fucking lot, when there’s so few people. But I can imagine that in India things are really very different.
5) No, I’m not being abstract for anyone’s convenience – we actually talk about the parties like that. We do use the names as well, but mostly the parties are referred to by colour, internally as well as externally. It’s a pretty unique thing. Or at least I haven’t encountered it anywhere else.
In Germany, colours are assigned as well, but they really depict the political views. For example, the blue and the orange party would both be brown in Germany and they wouldn’t use it themselves, but it would be used when somebody else describes them.
In Austria, the parties (at least the new ones) chose their own colours and it’s a pretty big part of their “corporate identity” (for lack of a better word). And there wouldn’t be one party, who actually described themselves as brown.
[Brown = nazi colour]
Any more questions? :)