Austria's presidential candidates hold final rallies in Vienna

Record ID: 102733

  • Title: Austria's presidential candidates hold final rallies in Vienna
  • Date: 20th May 2016
  • Summary: HOFER SMILING AND WAVING TO SUPPORTERS FROM STAGE HOFER ON STAGE SINGING WITH BAND, WAVING TO CROWD SUPPORTERS SINGING AND WAVING
  • Embargoed: 4th June 2016 20:58
  • Keywords: rally presidential election candidate Hofer Bellen
  • Location: VIENNA, AUSTRIA
  • City: VIENNA, AUSTRIA
  • Country: Austria
  • Topics: Government/Politics,Elections/Voting
  • Reuters ID: LVA0024IM6RT3
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text:The two remaining candidates in the Austrian presidential race on Friday (May 20) held their final rallies ahead of weekend's second-round vote, each pushing his own, dramatically different visions of the country.
    The anti-Islam and eurosceptic Freedom Party (FPO) grabbed more than a third of the vote in the first round of presidential elections on April 24.
    The second round is on Sunday (May 22), pitting FPO candidate Norbert Hofer against independent Alexander van der Bellen, a former Greens party leader.
    Playing on the discontent with European Union policies and xenophobia growing in the wake of the migration crisis that exploded last year, Hofer promised to shut the door to Islamists.
    "All those people who don't appreciate our country, those who are for Islamic state and war or who rape women, I tell these people - this is not your homeland, you can't remain in Austria. Because we clearly distinguish those who further build Austria together with us from those who only want to destroy this country. This distinguishment we have to keep," Hofer told his supporters in Vienna.
    "We have the duty and the responsibility to guard and develop Austria, this wonderful land, for the coming generations," the 45-year-old candidate added.
    Hofer's supporters expect him to shake up encrusted Austrian politics, which had been dominated by the governing Social Democrats and their conservative People's Party coalition partners for decades. The next Austrian president will not be from either of the two big parties for the first time in 65 years.
    " Because (Hofer) can make it clear to our government that they are going in a wrong direction, that they're going round and round, without a way out," says supporter Martin Cirkov, originally from former Yugoslavia.
    "It is just so, we already have too many of those refugees. We should take care of our own people first, for example we have enough old people who cannot even afford to pay for heating, and then we can take care of the others" said Manuela, a Vienna resident.
    Van der Bellen, a 72-year-old chain-smoking economics professor, urged even those who did not support him to join forces against Hofer and the FPO, referring to Sunday's runoff as "historic" and a crossroads between a European and an isolated Austria.
    "It is noted that this is about this country deciding its course. A decision between an open, Europe-friendly, Europe-conscious Austria that we can be proud of and something else, of which we don't want to say too much, but which is small, bordered-off, something put in reverse. And we don't want that," Van der Bellen said.
    Pollsters gave an edge of around 5 percent to Hofer, but analysts point out that the race is likely do be close, with many voters unaccounted for in the surveys.
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