Freedom Party faces Vienna voters

Vienna's Mayor and top candidate of the Social Democrats Michael Haeupl casts his vote.

VIENNA, Austria -- The far-right Freedom Party faces a crucial test in Vienna after an election campaign marked by attacks on foreigners and Austria's Jewish leader.

About 1.1 million Viennese, about one-sixth of eligible voters nationwide, can cast their ballots between 0500 GMT and 1600 GMT on Sunday.

The election is the biggest popularity test for Joerg Haider's Freedom Party since the anti-immigrant group joined a national coalition with Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel's conservative People's Party 13 months ago.

Vienna's Social Democrat Mayor Michael Haeupl, who heads a coalition with the People's Party, appears certain to be re-elected but the result of the vote will be watched for its national implications.

The Freedom Party suffered defeats in state elections in Styria and Burgenland last year.

Some political commentators believe that if the party does badly again, Haider may decide that being part of the national government is damaging to him and end the alliance with Schuessel.

But others say the Freedom Party has gained support in recent opinion polls with help from Haider, who still dominates the populist group despite resigning as leader last year to focus on being governor of the southern province of Carinthia.

"The Freedom Party had a disastrous position at the outset," political analyst Fritz Plasser told daily Der Standard.

"It was not unrealistic in January to talk of losses of eight to 10 percent. It would have been a defeat of such dimensions that you could not ignore it. But the situation has changed."

Pollsters now predict some losses for the Freedom Party, which won 27.9 percent of the vote in the 1996 Vienna election, but not big enough to cast a shadow on the national coalition.

The Freedom Party, the second largest party in the capital since 1991, has been running a characteristically provocative campaign, plastering the city with posters in which the words "Foreigners," "Crime" and "Drugs" are conspicuously linked.

Vienna has 285,000 legal immigrants, representing 18 percent of the capital's population, but the Freedom Party says the true figure is much higher if illegal aliens are included.

Haider, whose face adorns many posters instead of that of the party's main candidate in the city, Helene Partik-Pable, also attacked Jewish leader Ariel Muzicant, a move unprecedented in post-war Austria.

Widely branded anti-Semitic, Haider's attacks include charges that the Jewish leader is unpatriotic and involved in allegedly dubious real-estate business in Vienna.

Muzicant is suing him for libel.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Haider criticises Jewish leader
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Austrian right leader sued
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Insults fly as Haider leaves Rome
December 17, 2000
Austrian election blow for far-right party
December 3, 2000
Haider: 'Get rid of foreigners'
October 22, 2000

Vienna City Government
Freedom Party
People's Party

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