Coup de théâtre in Austrian political life. The Social Democratic Party caused consternation on Monday by announcing two days after the election of its new leader that it had switched the results of the two candidates. "Due to an employee's technical error in the Excel spreadsheet, the result was reversed," the head of the SPÖ's election committee, Michaela Grubesa, told a news conference, visibly embarrassed.
Exit Hans Peter Doskozil, 52, the representative of the centrist wing of this party sitting in the opposition. The unsuccessful candidate had been celebrating his victory all weekend, convinced that he had won 53% of the votes of the 600 or so delegates to the congress. In the tabloid Krone Zeitung on Monday, he said he already saw himself at the chancellery. He immediately took note of this reversal of the situation, announcing his withdrawal from national political life. It was "not a pleasant day," he commented euphemistically.
It is a candidate recently out of the shadows, Andreas Babler, 50 years old, who finds himself against all odds at the head of the party. In shock, the lucky winner preferred to ask for a new count.
Discovered by chance
This confusion announced 48 hours after the vote provoked jeers on social networks and many indignant reactions, a local party official evoking her "shame" in the face of this "incredible amateurism". A commentator on public television ORF said he had "never seen this in thirty years of work", believing that "it would stick to the skin" of the SPÖ.
Especially since this blunder, discovered by pure chance, comes after years of internal quarrels within the party, deposed since 2017 after having provided many chancellors to Austria. Under these conditions, he is lagging behind the far right in the polls, well on his way to winning the legislative elections scheduled for autumn 2024.
Babler "apologized for the image sent back by part of the apparatus to the activists", promising to "put his training back on track for success". He is mayor of the small town of Traiskirchen (east), known for hosting the largest registration center for asylum seekers in Austria, a country often reluctant to welcome refugees. The fifty-year-old had found himself in the hot seat during the campaign for a 2020 video that resurfaced. He is described as "the most aggressive foreign policy military alliance that has ever existed."
This is not the first election scandal in the Alpine country of nine million people. In 2016, irregularities during the counting of the presidential election prompted the Constitutional Court to invalidate the result of the second round and the Austrians, exasperated, had to go back to the polling booth.
