October 1st 2006, parliamentary elections were to be held in Austria. For six and a half years, chancellor Dr. Wolfgang Schüssel (People´s Party) had been leading a government of two conservative parties: People´s Party (Österreichische Volkspartei / ÖVP) and Freedom Party (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs / FPÖ). April 2005, the ministers and some other leading politicians of the Freedom Party had split off and had founded a new party called Alliance for Austria´s Future (Bündnis Zukunft Österreich / BZÖ) and from there had built the government coalition with the People´s Party.
This year, People’s Party suffered an unexpected defeat as the Social Democrats (Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs / SPÖ) narrowly took first place. This was a quite astonishing result, for People´s Party had been regarded as favourite by all polls for several weeks. People’s Party lost eight per cent of its former record vote, ending up with 34.3 per cent, based on preliminary official results. That was just behind the Social Democrats who won 35.3 per cent. So Dr. Alfred Gusenbauer, head of the Social Democrats, will be the next chancellor of the Republic of Austria.
The two main Austrian parties obviously lost support to two right parties (Freedom Party and Alliance for Austria´s Future) and to a new protest group led by EU parliamentarian Dr. Hans-Peter Martin, which is called HPM (initials of the leader). HPM itself and the Communist Party (Kommunistische Partei Österreichs / KPÖ) didn’t manage to gain seats in the Austrian Parliament. Four per cent of the votes are necessarily required, at least.
Third came the Greens ( Die Grünen) with Speaker Dr. Alexander van der Bellen (11 per cent; the first time that a Green Party gained more than ten per cent in federal election in a European country), followed by the Freedom Party, led by Heinz -Christian Strache with 11 per cent. Whereas before the elections both Dr. Schüssel and Dr. Gusenbauer had declared not to form a coalition with the Freedom Party and Mr. Strache himself had refused to strive for governmental participation, the Greens had really hope to become junior partner in the next government, either with the People´s Party or with the Social Democrats. Now, more than ten per cent are still too little - they can´t get 50 per cen t together with one of the bigger parties. That´s because the Alliance for Austria´s Future surprisingly got 4.1 per cent of the votes and gained seats in Parliament. No poll had expected this. The Alliance, party of
Dr. Jörg Haider, governor of the province of Carinthia, had been predicted to make three per cent maximum and so to fail. But party leader Peter Westenthaler, in former times influential politician in the Freedom Party and afterwards employed by Frank Stronach´s Magna Company, managed to get in.
An alarming signal for the decline of political consciousness in Austria is the low election turnout: only 74 per cent of those who are entitled to vote really went to the ballot-box.

Yours,
Walter Dujmovits, jr.