SPIEGELONLINE INTERNATIONAL: Despite their worst defeat in postwar history, Austria's Social Democrats and conservatives are preparing to enter into a second coalition government. But gains made by the country's far right, suggest the future could be dim for Austria's two mainstream parties.
No one pays much mind to the short, elegant man standing at a taxi stand in front of Vienna's Hofburg Imperial Palace, once home to the Habsburg dynasty. With his salt-and-pepper hair, alert eyes and bushy eyebrows, he spends a full 20 minutes standing among the people without being recognized. He's on his mobile telephone trying to build a new government for Austria.
Werner Faymann wants to be the country's next chancellor. Faymann, touted as "the new choice" on campaign posters, also happens to be the man the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) can thank for capturing only 29 percent of votes in that country's parliamentary election -- the worst outcome for the party since the end of World War II. The potential chancellor, as the behind-the-scenes coordinator of his party's failed coalition with the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP), as transportation minister and, since June, as head of the SPÖ, bears a large share of the responsibility for the disaster.
But now it's time for Faymann to put things right. Facing a tight schedule, he barely has enough time to sit down for a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice at Café Griensteidl. "The council of ministers, committee meetings, the party leadership," says Faymann, noting that they all want something from him now, and yet he doesn't try to create the impression that his hectic schedule is something he regrets. We need a reasonable government, quickly, he says, pointing out that the old "coalition of disagreement has been voted out of office."
Formally, at any rate. Only an hour earlier, these lame-duck politicians were sworn in a second time, at a ceremony with all the pomp and circumstance of the Habsburg court, and Werner Faymann was in the thick of it. The entire group had to appear once more in the Maria Theresia Room of the Hofburg Palace, under crystal chandeliers, gilded stucco and tapestries: the ministers from the two major parties, the SPÖ and the ÖVP, who, for a little less than 18 months -- a shorter tenure than that of any other cabinet in Austria's Second Republic -- were part of a coalition government racked by vicious feuds.
Now they are taking a new oath of office, pledging to do the best possible job until a new government has been formed. Judging by their high spirits, one would think they were teenagers on a class trip. Hapless outgoing Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer watches the spectacle with a stony expression on his face. Instead of Gusenbauer, his fellow party member Faymann steps into the spotlight at the end to praise the electorate: "The public has a strong sense for when a politician is acting in a constructive way." Will the Far Right Doom Austria's Mainstream Parties? (Part 1)>>> By Walter Mayr in Vienna | October 8, 2008
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