New earthquake in Austria is imminent - Brief remains "Shadow Chancellor"

The Austrian Chancellor takes “a step aside”, but the Kurz system still exists.

The opposition warns that Kurz will continue to set the course as shadow chancellor.

Vienna - “A new style.

It's time, ”said Sebastian Kurz on posters for the 2017 election. Some people are now judging the new style differently than expected: The Austrian Chancellor is accused of buying manipulated opinion polls and

disseminating them

in mass media such as

.

This was paid for with taxpayers' money.

Kurz announced his resignation as Chancellor at the weekend, but did not withdraw from politics, but rather took “a step aside”.

The opposition is alarmed because the Kurz system continues to exist.

Opposition warns: That is why Kurz's "step to the side" is only a temporary resignation

The Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg (ÖVP) will be sworn in as the new Chancellor on Monday. This step saves the coalition of the ÖVP and the Greens, but it seems to be only a temporary solution. Sebastian Kurz is said to be working on his return. The MP Jan Krainer (SPÖ) said on Sunday the newspaper

involved in the scandal

: For him Schallenberg is "nothing more than the jumping jack from Kurz". This is not about a person, but about the system behind it. "It's about systematic abuse of power," the SPÖ member continued.

Kurz's idea is probably to skilfully avoid the crossfire of the allegations by stepping to the side. The party leader of the NEOs analyzed: “He is still at the controls of power. I am somewhat astonished that it is apparently not a criterion for club chairmen to be an impeccable person ”. She alluded to the demand of the green Vice-Chancellor Koglers, who had called for an “impeccable person” as Federal Chancellor.

The opposition in Austria points out that Kurz, as ÖVP chairman and parliamentary group leader, could continue to determine the course in the background.

Because in this function he can determine the government team, the lists of candidates in parliamentary elections and the political line of the ÖVP and sits on the Council of Ministers.

Both party friends and the opposition assume that Kurz is already planning his comeback.

He wants to go back to the Chancellery in the next elections.

A "shadow chancellor" is short, says the SPÖ chairman Pamela Rendi-Wagner, as

reported by

the

.

Austria: Special session in the National Council on Tuesday

The ÖVP chairman receives support from within his own ranks from Elisabeth Köstinger, the Federal Minister for Agriculture and Tourism. She was certain that Kurz could “soon return to office as Federal Chancellor” once the allegations have been resolved, she wrote on Twitter. Sebastian Kurz announced, however, that he wanted to apply for the waiver of his immunity himself.

A motion of no confidence is now no longer possible due to the "step aside", but a special meeting of the National Council was planned for Tuesday due to a joint motion by the three opposition parties NEO, FPÖ and SPÖ.

This should take place as planned.

A specific topic has not yet been mentioned.

Originally, NEO, SPÖ and FPÖ wanted to make the house searches carried out in the ÖVP party headquarters, the Chancellery and the Ministry of Finance as well as the suspected suspicions against Sebastian Kurz an issue.

Background: These are the allegations against Sebastian Kurz

After the Ibiza scandal, allegations of corruption are apparently not much news in Austria, but the criminal consequences of the current allegations are greater than ever before. Up to ten years imprisonment is the sentence for serious infidelity and corruption. The allegations go back to a time when Kurz was not yet Federal Chancellor, but wanted to become urgently. The then foreign minister is said to have commissioned surveys from an opinion research institute - and so did the results. You should present Kurz in a particularly good light and make the competitor Mitterlehner disappear from the scene.

For around 1.1 million euros, advertisements in the media

and

, which published the manipulated surveys,

are said to have

been bought.

For this purpose, tax money is said to have been embezzled.

The investigation is ongoing, the presumption of innocence applies.

The media landscape in Austria is more dependent on advertising corruption than in Germany.

The allegations against Sebastian Kurz are based on around 300,000 text messages that the public prosecutor's office seized from the cellphone of the former Secretary General of the Austrian Ministry of Finance, Thomas Schmid, as reported by the

,

among others

.