- Title: AUSTRIA: PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN
- Date: 16th April 1998
- Summary: VIENNA, AUSTRIA (RECENT AND FILE) (RTV) 1. SLV GOVERNMENT BUILDING IN CENTRAL VIENNA 0.06 2. LAS AUSTRIAN FLAG 0.12 3. MV STATUE 0.17 4. SCU ELECTION POSTER FEATURING HEIDE SCHMIDT, LEADER OF OPPOSITION LIBERAL FORUM. 0.24 5. MV/SCU SCHMIDT IN HER OFFICE AND SPEAKING IN CORRIDORS WITH INTERVIEWER (5 SHOTS) 0.48 6. SCU SCHMIDT
- Embargoed: 1st May 1998 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: VIENNA, AUSTRIA
- City:
- Country: Austria
- Reuters ID: LVAIE577P6SEHU7YYOT5YFKP23K
- Story Text: Austrian's incumbent president has emerged as favourite to win another term at next Sunday's poll.But two female candidates have ganged up and hope to reduce Thomas Klestil's chance of winning 50 percent of the vote in the first round.
Although Vienna is covered in election posters, the campaign has been a lacklustre affair, enlivened only by the late entry of Lutheran bishop Gertraud Knoll, who has kept appearances to a minimum so she can continue to breast-feed her six-month-old son, and a minor scandal about Klestil's civil service pension.Klestil was a career diplomat before winning 1992 election as candidate of the conservative people's party (Oevp).Klestil is running as an independent in Sunday's race emphasising his cross-party appeal and experience as Austria prepares for the European Union's (EU's) eastward expansion.
Klestil has refused to debate with his rivals and looks uncomfortable at his rare campaign appearances.
The man dividing Austrians and attracting the most attention in a low-key presidential election campaign is not even running for office.
Far-right firebrand Joerg Haider, leader of the Freedom Party, has polarised Austrian politics so much that the two women, liberal candidates for the largely ceremonial office have declared they would never make him head of government.
The two conservative candidates, including incumbent Thomas Klestil, responded they would respect the will of the electorate in future parliamentary elections, even if this meant appointing the controversial Haider as chancellor.
Haider favours strict curbs on immigration, wants the introduction of a single European currency delayed and opposes the enlargement of the European Union to include the former communist countries of central and eastern Europe.
He was forced to resign as provincial governor of Carinthia in 1991 after praising the Hitler's labour policies.
But Haider's party is the third largest in parliament, winning 22 percent of the vote in December 1995 elections, and his approval rating in polls has been as high as 38 percent.
The two female candidates profess admiration for one another and are united in their determination to prevent Heider ever becoming chancellor.Liberal Forum leader Heide Schmidt, who won 16.4 percent as candidate of the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe) in the first round in 1992, the best performance by a woman candidate.She found opposition forum in 1993 after quitting FPOe in protest at its anti-immigrant stance.Schmidt supported the candidacy of her rival, Lutheran bishop Gertraud Knoll, the first Bishop of Burgenland province and leader of the Lutheran church in Austria since 1994.On unpaid leave from that post, Knoll has juggled a campaign focused on social and justice and rights of immigrants with the demands of nursing her six-month old son.She is a mother of three.
They both hope to force a second round in the election by denying Klestil the margin he needs -- 50 percent plus one vote -- to secure victory on April 19.
Knoll and Schmidt say they would back each other if either managed to force a run-off on May 24.
But Schmidt has accused the political novice of practising "the politics of feeling", while Knoll says her rival favours a brand of economic liberalism that would intensify Austria's social divisions.
Knoll, 39, says she decided to stand "because I am convinced I can bring more warmth into the politics of this country".She has campaigned for the rights of immigrants and asylum-seekers and once took six Afghan children into her home for two years.
A poll by NEWS magazine last week suggested Klestil would win in the first round with 54 percent of the vote, followed by Knoll with 12 percent and Schmidt with eight.
Neither of the two remaining candidates, building tycoon Richard Lugner and neutrality campaigner Karl Walter Novak, is seen as a remotely serious contender.
Lugner, a self-made millionaire with a colourful private life, and best known outside Austria, for inviting celebrities, including Joan Collins and Sarah Ferguson to Vienna's Opera Ball, campaigns on his reputation as an independent self-made man and believes the presidency is too important to be left to politicians.The NEWS poll gave him four percent of the vote.
Novak, a maverick campaigning for Austrian neutrality and against the single currency, got a resounding zero percent in the poll.
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