It is a time of great, breathless scandals in Austria, and this message is certainly one of them: On Friday it became known that Johannes Peterlik, Austria's highest-ranking official in the Foreign Office until 2020 and most recently ambassador to Indonesia, was suspended with immediate effect.
The Vienna Public Prosecutor's Office is investigating Peterlik, who denies the allegations, for possible abuse of office and violation of official secrecy.
The tremendous suspicion of the Viennese public prosecutors: the diplomat is said to have passed the formula of the nerve agent Novitschok on to ex-Wirecard board member Jan Marsalek, the gift with which the Russian secret service agent Sergej Skripal in 2018 and the regime critic Alexej Navalny in 2020 were to be killed.
Both victims of the attack barely survived.
On a cursory glance, it looks like the case of diplomat Peterlik has nothing to do with the other affairs that have been shaking Austria for more than two years.
Nothing to do with the Ibiza video about which the first government led by Sebastian Kurz fell in May 2019;
and nothing to do with the advertising affair, which caused him to trip a second time shortly before last week, whereupon Alexander Schallenberg inherited him as Federal Chancellor on October 11th.
On the other hand, if you look more closely, based on the current case, many clues lead you into the thicket of affairs of that republic, which in its national anthem is praised as "much-vaunted Austria". Both main actors in the Wirecard scandal were Austrians: both the former CEO Markus Braun (currently in custody), who acted as a donor for the Chancellor's party ÖVP, and the ex-CEO Jan Marsalek (currently on the run, wanted with an international arrest warrant). Marsalek are said to have had contacts with the Russian secret service.
The career diplomat Peterlik, son of the former ambassador to Thailand, was in the background something like an emblematic figure of the ÖVP-FPÖ coalition under the then Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, which had failed after the Ibiza video, and was the son-in-law of a Lower Austrian regional councilor from the conservative ÖVP, top civil servant under ÖVP ministers, later preferred candidate of right-wing populist FPÖ presidential candidate Norbert Hofer for the office of cabinet director. In addition: Peterlik's wife was employed by the BVT domestic secret service. She served there under the man who was involved in Marsalek's escape to Belarus. After all, Peterlik's father-in-law is said to have known the escaped Marsalek, according to witnesses.
What does all of this mean for Austria's current reputation abroad? Michael Linhart, Peterlik's predecessor as Director General in the Foreign Ministry and Foreign Minister himself for two weeks, will soon have to find out. By the way, Peterlik's interim boss in the Ministry of Family Affairs is considered a suspect in the advertising affair. And the new Federal Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg? It was he who in September - who was still foreign minister at the time - learned of the Peterlik / Novitschok case and initiated the official's suspension.
Schallenberg also has other problems. After the first verbal slips, he has to find himself and his position vis-à-vis the still party leader and parliamentary group leader Sebastian Kurz. DER SPIEGEL and »Standard« trace its meteoric rise again in the second episode of the podcast »Inside Austria«. Schallenberg has the task of moving the coalition with the Greens into calmer waters, while at the same time keeping an eye on possible diadoch fights in the ÖVP.
In the latest opinion polls, the ÖVP is only on par with the social democratic SPÖ, a drop for the conservatives by around eleven percent.
From a purely mathematical point of view, a coalition between the SPÖ, Greens and Neos would even have a majority.
Things have been in motion on many fronts, not least because SPÖ leader Pamela Rendi-Wagner announced a change of course a few days ago: The doctrine that has been valid for 35 years that the Social Democrats will not form a coalition with the right-wing populist FPÖ is no longer binding .
The electorate's talent for displacement
When the Federal President and the Federal Government present the wreath-laying ceremony at Heldenplatz tomorrow, Tuesday, the national holiday, at 11 a.m., the latest polls will be just two days old: They also say that the FPÖ under hardliner Herbert Kickl is now only three percent of the position of the strongest party - less than two and a half years after the SPIEGEL and the »Süddeutsche Zeitung« published the Ibiza video.
In relation to the electorate, this can be called short-term memory or a talent for repression.
"The talent for finding bright sides in existence, the inclination to take the heaviness lightly," wrote the great Viennese psychologist Alfred Polgar in 1949 in "Der Österreicher", always distinguished his compatriots.
In doing so, "it cannot be denied that these pleasant qualities sometimes manifest themselves in an unpleasant manner: as a willingness to let things go."
Social media moment of the week
Florian Klenk, editor-in-chief of the weekly newspaper "Falter" tries to limit the damage after the love affair between an expert at the Vienna Economic and Corruption Prosecutor and a public prosecutor at the same authority became public. The spicy thing: Klenk, as he himself admits, passed on unredacted investigation files to the plagiarism hunter Stefan Weber; the files contained the woman's real name, apparently Weber used the information to track down the woman - and to make the relationship public.
It may of course be a coincidence that the private lives of investigators at the Vienna Public Prosecutor's Office for Economic Affairs and Corruption became the talk of the town in Vienna at a time when the same authority was putting massive pressure on the Chancellor party ÖVP and its chairman Sebastian Kurz elevated.
This politically rather unimportant private disclosure from the WKStA of the ÖVP is certainly not inconvenient.
Stories we recommend you today:
Sebastian Kurz's confidants try to soften the shock waves of the corruption affair.
But more and more traditionally partisans are publicly distancing themselves.
The big move away
And of course the current episode of our podcast »Inside Austria«, this time about the uncanny rise of Sebastian Kurz:
How Kurz became a hardliner
There are places in Austria where there is hardly any political space next to the ÖVP.
Is there disappointment with Sebastian Kurz or anger at the opponents in turquoise-black strongholds?
A visit to the northeastern Weinviertel:
Forbearance to the Buam: How Kurz followers digest the fall of their hero (standard)
In a new poll, Alexander Schallenberg is seen as the best ÖVP chancellor, and among ÖVP voters he is more popular than ex-chancellor Kurz_
Majority of Austrians would like to withdraw from Kurz (standard)
Heartfelt,
Your Walter Mayr
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