How is the glorious Austrian Social Democracy - now, in the final spurt, a few days before the election? Thomas Drozda should know. The SPÖ Federal Managing Director is the official brain and engine of his party.
A better template than the Ibiza video including resignation of FPÖ-Vice Chancellor Heinz Christian Strache and overthrow of the government under ÖVP leader Sebastian Kurz was hardly conceivable for the opposition Social Democrats. And yet the SPÖ peaks seem strangely hesitant four months later. Almost as if she had grabbed the shooter's fear of the penalty.
If you listen to the Upper Austrian Drozda on this sunny autumn day in Vienna, you almost have to worry about the Social Democrats. At the meeting in the Café Landtmann behind the Burgtheater, the SPÖ top man orders an iced coffee, takes a spoonful of it and then feebly states that he believes "to reason" of the voters. From polls that see his party knocked off at about 22 percent, he does not let himself be fooled: "The best is yet to come."
But that does not sound like a challenge, but rather like a phrasing with casual worldliness. So worldly that simpler knitted comrades would not even understand, let alone share the shattering diagnosis - it could only get better for the SPÖ.
Whether the Social Democrats can really go up until the election Sunday on September 29? The top candidate Pamela Rendi-Wagner now feel "great inner-party solidarity, that gives her strength," says Drozda. He does not sound as though he himself believes what he is saying. Does he not also bear the blame for the misery? Rendi-Wagner has a "3-D problem", it was last on the television station ORF: Drozda and former Defense Minister Doskozil and the Tyrolean chief Dornauer, three reeking male alpha animals, fell regularly in the back.
Robert Jaeger / DPA
SPÖ Federal Managing Director Thomas Drozda: Luxury chronometer sold
In contrast to the party leader, who joined the SPÖ until 2017, Drozda can also remember from own experience at much better times. During his childhood and youth, Bruno Kreisky ruled the country for thirteen years, until today worshiped far beyond the SPÖ. Kreisky pioneered groundbreaking education, social welfare and justice reforms, and even at the international level gave Austria's voice weight. In 1993, Drozda himself was in the vicious circle of power - as a consultant to head of government Franz Vranitzky, who served for the Social Democracy five times as Federal Chancellor and won four elections. Even under Vranitzky's successor Viktor Klima was Drozda consultant. In May 2016, he finally rose to Chancellor's Office under the thin-skinned as short-lived head of government Christian Kern.
It threatens a defeat of historical proportions
Over the past 50 years, Austria's Social Democrats, with short-term interludes, have almost always been chancellors. Since the election in October 2017, but they have to press the opposition banks. And now threatens on September 29, a defeat of historical proportions: The backlog of the SPÖ on the ÖVP, to the conservative People's Party led by the young ex-chancellor Sebastian Kurz, according to surveys, eleven to thirteen percentage points.
The fact that the SPÖ, founded in 1889 by the Viennese doctor Viktor Adler and now led by the Viennese physician Rendi-Wagner, was able to sink so low has little to do with neglect, which the Reds themselves have to blame - at least if you hear Thomas Drozda speak. He sees it this way: "What is referred to as the dramatic decline of social democratic parties exists throughout Europe, but not everywhere, and I recall the Social Democratic governments in Portugal, Denmark or Sweden."
Moreover, according to Drozda, "the political landscape has differentiated between Neusiedler and Lake Constance, and today there are five, six parties in Parliament, not just three." And: "That in Austria since the end of the nineties, when Jörg Haider began to rant against the migration, such an envy cooperative was cultivated, I can only explain myself by the emergence of right-wing populists."
CHRISTIAN BRUNA / EPA-EFE / REX
Former Chancellor Kurz: "He does not care about content"
What does not say Drozda: The SPÖ are barely approved by the voters still core competencies. The workers were traditionally the backers of the party, but by now they vote in favor of the right-wing populist FPÖ. The SPÖ mostly loyal - with decreasing tendency - are only pensioners and migrants with Austrian passport. The latter benefits from the fact that those everyday problems that come with massive immigration, especially in Vienna, are alien to most Social Democratic functionaries. The comrades preached "Tolerance from a distance", judges the news magazine "Profil". The case of the teacher Susanne Wiesinger, a convinced social democrat, who drew attention to immigration-related abuses in Viennese schools - and in the end only found support with Sebastian Kurz, who made her an ombudswoman in the Ministry of Education.
"There was hostility against me from the first day, 'Thomas, you're a Bobo' it was called immediately," says Drozda. "Bobo" in Wiener Neureiche with a postal address in a preferred residential area means: "But I refuse to judge people for appearances." Drozda has now exchanged his Patek Philippe chronometer for a cheaper Rolex, but this has largely been lost in public perception.
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However, the fact that ex-Chancellor Kern, despite existing sanctions against the Putin regime, just assumed a supervisory board mandate in a Russian state corporation, certainly made headlines. To make matters worse was added an SPÖ support video of the former head of government Alfred Gusenbauer. Gusenbauer, who was once hailed as a Barolo chancellor because of his preference for costly wines, had been particularly struck by his withdrawal from politics as a consultant to Central Asian autocrats and controversial gambling companies.
With such a legacy on her back, the political starter Rendi-Wagner almost pity. Everyone can see it in the TV duels and nationwide performances: The woman is smart, quick-witted and sympathetic, also "fesch", as it is called in Austria. But that's not enough to fill the programmatic vacuum left by party leaders. Shrunk to the lowest common denominator, it is expressed in the helpless election slogan: "Humanity triumphs".
"Hands up! Clap"
There are scenes in which Rendi-Wagner would have wished some professionals by their side. For example, when she was glaring and broadcast live, she was supposed to explain on television why the SPÖ would be suspicious of the government after the Ibiza affair - and behind her in the gloom the male members of the party executive are lined up like the executives of a funeral home ,
Or when a jerk did not turn off the microphone after her speech in Vienna's Museumsquartier and everyone could hear them calling into the silence "Hands up! Clap." No coach stood by her side, who could have saved her from patronizing the cool ex-chancellor in a TV duel with Sebastian Kurz: "He's still young, he can still learn something" - whereupon Kurz's 15 years older Competitor looked down from above and looked like a wordless execution.
And yet: If one believes Drozda, Kurz must soon come to the SPÖ in order to guarantee a stable government for Austria. "But then he will need a narrative, a story that explains why suddenly this should work, what he once blew up in 2017 - a coalition with the SPÖ," mocks Drozda: "Sebastian Kurz is about the right narrative, he does not care about content. "
Would not the SPÖ have to proclaim logically, with opportunists like Kurz they exclude future alliances? So far the Social Democrats do not go so far. And the ÖVP boss himself holds all options open. Anyone who knows Kurz, but suspects: Only in the event that there is no other way, the shrunken Social Democrats under Pamela Rendi-Wagner in Austria's next government have something to order.
