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Austria Wraps Up Ugly, Divisive Presidential Campaign

by Luis Ramirez

   VIENNA --

   Austrians prepared to go to the polls Sunday in an election that could
   see the country, one of Europe's most stable democracies, get its first
   far-right president since World War II.

   Analysts said the race between far-right candidate Norbert Hofer of the
   anti-Islamist Freedom Party and his opponent, Alexander Van Der Bellen
   of the Green Party, was too close to predict in the hours before the
   start of voting, with some polls showing Nofer, a former aeronautical
   engineer, slightly ahead.

   The campaign has been long and angry.

   A demonstrator holds a placard at an anti-Nofer rally in Vienna. (L.
   Ramirez/VOA)

   A newspaper headline on Saturday described it as an "Election of Hate,"
   reflecting pent-up frustrations among Nofer's rightist supporters and
   fear and bitterness among his leftist detractors. Critics have labeled
   Nofer a Nazi for his anti-immigration stance in the face of Europe's
   migrant crisis, which saw more than a million refugees and migrants
   enter Europe last year, many of them through Austria.

   Sunday's vote will be a rerun of an election held in June that Van Der
   Bellen won by 31,000 votes. Austria's constitutional court voided the
   results after finding irregularities in the counting.

   Anti-establishment mood

   This time, analysts said, Nofer could benefit from the
   anti-establishment mood sweeping across the U.S. and Europe that has
   been partly inspired by Britain's decision to leave the European Union
   and the victory of Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential election.

   The sentiments have also been fueled by a series of terror attacks in
   Paris, Brussels and in parts of France, all since the start of the
   migrant crisis.

   "The feeling among people is one of change, because of fear of terror
   attacks. People are getting afraid," said Robert Marschall, head of
   Austria's EU Exit Party, a tiny party that last year organized a
   massive but ultimately unsuccessful signature drive to begin a process
   of discussing Austria's exit from the European Union.

   Hofer's campaign posters across central Vienna have been defaced with
   swastikas and mustaches that made Hofer resemble Adolf Hitler. At an
   anti-Hofer rally Saturday, a small group of leftist demonstrators held
   banners with obscene language, some condemning Nofer as a Nazi.

   Norbert Nofer's campaign posters have been defaced, reflecting
   Austria's angry and divisive campaign. This one, in central Vienna,
   shows a mustache depicting Nofer as Hitler. (L. Ramirez/VOA)

   "We don't want a right-wing party and a right-wing president," said
   Olga Weinberger, a demonstrator with the New Left Turn, a group she
   described as an anti-capitalist, anti-racist organization.

   The Nazi connotation is especially sensitive given Austria's history in
   the last century. The country was the birthplace of Hitler and was
   annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938.

   Third Reich tie denied

   Nofer's Freedom Party was founded in the 1950s by former members of
   Hitler's National Socialist party, but its current members deny any
   ideological connection to the Third Reich and deny they are racist or
   anti-Semitic.

   A supporter of Nofer, a banker who asked to be identified only by his
   initials, M.A., called the defacing of Nofer's campaign posters a sign
   of intolerance. "I think it's very cheap because what leftist parties
   stand out for apparently, such as freedom of speech, such as democracy,
   it contradicts it," he said.

   M.A., who said he is Jewish, said he took exception to any suggestion
   that those who favor curbs on immigration are racist or anti-Semitic.
   "We opened our gates irresponsibly to people of whom we don't know
   their background," he said.

   Sunday's election hinges largely on voters who have changed their minds
   since June. Among them is Siegfried, a 68-year-old retiree who voted
   for Van Der Bellen six months ago but who said he would vote for Hofer
   on Sunday.

   Siegfried said it was Hofer's promises to curb immigration that won his
   vote, after the EU tried to mandate that Austria and other member
   nations accept refugees.

   Siegried said his attitude was always one of welcoming the refugees.

   "At the beginning it was totally to help them, because they were people
   who had nothing. We had to help them," he said. "But what happened, now
   I cannot stand it anymore. It was an invasion. It was like we are
   occupied and somebody else controlled it, and we are not even allowed
   to say anything."

   Two Syrian refugees, Saad al Ghefari and his wife, Oula al Khatib, say
   they are grateful for safety that Austria has offered them, but they
   fear for the future as they sense the welcome they got from many
   Austrians offered last year may be running out. (L. Ramirez/VOA)

   Refugees' concerns

   On a chilly afternoon in Vienna's MuseumsQuartier cultural complex, two
   Syrian refugees, Saad al Ghefari and his wife, Oula al Khatib, were out
   with their newborn son in a stroller and reflecting on what the
   election could mean for them.

   "Maybe they won't kick us out, but [it] will be harder to live," al
   Ghefari said.

   Al Khatib shared her husband's concern. "Of course I feel afraid now.
   If Hofer will win, I don't know what will happen to us," she said.

   Al Khatib is a film director and al Ghefari is a comedian who was
   well-known in Syria before fleeing last year. He watched the U.S.
   election closely.

   "It's like when the joke became true. It's like a long American film.
   We are living this film," he said.

   But al Ghefari said he held out hope and that he saw it all as a lesson
   on the workings of democracy.

   "The left wing always complains about the right wing. So let's give
   them a chance, and this is what democracy is all about," he said.
   Al Ghefari also said this generation of Austrians is fortunate not to
   have lived through the horrors of war, as he has.

   "I have the feeling that people have forgotten what it means to be in a
   war. It has been 70 years. Everybody forgot it, and they [would] need
   to live [through] a new war to know what democracy means and to live in
   peace," he said.