23 May 2019
“Mistah Kurtz, he dead”?
Austria’s political ‘heart of darkness’.
By Neil Tidmarsh
So another coalition bites the dust. Last December, Belgium’s coalition government collapsed and its prime minister Charles Michel resigned – he’s continuing as head of a caretaker government until later this week (the EU parliamentary elections coincide with a general election). Last February, Spain’s coalition government collapsed, and general elections last month failed to clarify the situation, with prime minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialists increasing their presence in parliament but still not commanding a majority. And this week, Austria’s coalition between the centre right People’s Party and the far right Freedom Party exploded in the most spectacular fashion.
The footage of Heinz-Christian Strache – the Freedom Party’s leader and Austria’s vice-chancellor – in that luxurious Balearic villa could hardly be more damning. He appears to offer motorway-building contracts in Austria to “a Russian oligarch’s niece” in exchange for a political donation from her “not entirely legal” cash fortune and for press support via the purchase of an Austrian newspaper. He apparently boasts about his “strategic collaboration” with Moscow and expresses a contempt for the “decadent” West, a dislike of press freedom and an admiration for Victor Orban for muzzling such freedoms in Hungary. And he seems to make particularly scandalous and salacious claims about the leader of the People’s Party, Sebastian Kurtz, who was soon to become his coalition partner and the Chancellor of Austria.
The footage is two years old, taken some months before Herr Strache and his party entered government, but the fall-out this week was immediate and dramatic. He resigned as head of his party and as vice-chancellor. Chancellor Kurtz then took the opportunity to sack interior minister Herbert Kickl of the Freedom Party, who he’d been trying in vain to get rid of for some time. The rest of the Freedom Party resigned from the government in protest. So that’s the end of the People’s Party / Freedom Party coalition government – Chancellor Kurtz’s party is left on its own with only 61 seats out of the assembly’s 183 (the Freedom Party has 51 and the centre left Social Democrats have 52). He has replaced the outgoing Freedom Party ministers of the armed forces, security, justice and the civil service with apolitical, technical appointees, and has scheduled an early election for this autumn. But he might not survive that long – all week there have been calls for him to resign and he is expected to face a vote of no confidence in the assembly within the next few days. So – politically speaking – “Mistah Kurtz, he dead”?
Well, that question brings us to the most intriguing questions about this particular glimpse into Austria’s political ‘heart of darkness’. Who filmed that encounter in Ibiza? Who leaked it to the press? And why has it surfaced at this particular moment, two years after it was taken?
Der Spiegel and the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the two newspapers that published the footage, insist that they don’t know who is behind the films (though both editors admit that they know the immediate source). But there are theories; some fingers have been pointed at the Centre for Political Beauty, a German campaign group, but it has denied any involvement. And the elaborate, extensive and sophisticated nature of the operation – more than six hours of film, impressive bugging, quality camera work, and not just surveillance but what appears to be a “sting” operation, an intelligence-based and carefully staged scenario to trap Herr Strache – suggests a more “professional” outfit, perhaps even a state-run one.
Herr Strache claims that a foreign intelligence service has framed him. Many others suspect that an intelligence service was involved (though few, perhaps, would agree that he had been ‘framed’ rather than merely ‘set up’); the president of Germany himself, Wolfgang Schäuble, thinks that it was indeed an espionage sting operation. “Such a set-up must have had a lot of financial and logistical muscle behind it” he said to Stern. “It reeks of an intelligence agency.” Some theories involve Russia (“the set-up bore all the hallmarks of an old-school Soviet kompromat operation” The Times). But it’s difficult to see why Moscow would want to damage an apparently pro-Russian politician and party like Herr Strache and the Freedom Party.
As ever, the best line of enquiry to follow in such cases is “Cui bono?” (“who benefits?”) or, as the editor here at Shaw Sheet would ask, less pretentiously and more colourfully, “who has their bums in the butter?”
Let’s return to Chancellor Kurtz’s sacking of that interior minister, the Freedom Party’s Herbert Kickl. What was that about? Last year, a police unit, presumably under the control and command of the interior minister and his far-right Freedom Party, raided the offices of Austria’s intelligence agency the BVT and seized secret and sensitive material including details of BVT’s investigations into alleged links between Austria’s far-right and Russian politicians and criminals. Other material was seized, including files about the agency’s foreign operations and information which other national intelligence agencies had shared with it. The possibility that such information had fallen into the hands of Austria’s far-right, suspected of being sympathetic to Putin and having contact with Moscow, sent shock waves through Vienna and through Western intelligence agencies abroad. Such allied agencies (including Britain) have since refused to share information with Austria. It seems that Vienna has been frozen out of the international struggle against terrorism, extremism and organised crime as a result, no doubt leaving it weak and vulnerable. The Austrian intelligence services were furious. Chancellor Kurtz tried to have Herbert Kickl sacked, but his coalition partners stood up for their own and wouldn’t allow it. The Chancellor may well have come to bitterly regret the partnership, which many regarded as a pact with the devil (the Freedom Party is, after all, a populist, nationalist, extremist party founded by ex-Nazis and with neo-fascist roots). This week, however, its demise gave the chancellor his opportunity and Herr Kickl was kicked out at last. A victory for Chancellor Kurtz.
It did, nevertheless, precipitate the collapse of his government and make a fresh election inevitable. But what is likely to happen in that election? Voters will almost certainly abandon the disgraced and discredited Freedom Party. And where are those right-leaning voters likely to go? To Herr Kurtz’s centre-right People’s Party, no doubt. If he can pick up 31 of the Freedom Party’s seats, he’ll have his majority. Good news for Herr Kurtz.
And good news for the Austrian intelligence services, too? The fall of Herr Kickl, his far-right People’s Party and its leader Herr Strache must strike them as poetic justice at the very least, as retribution, divine or otherwise. They must be celebrating it with even more glee than anyone else, one would imagine, and looking forward to being reinstated into the international co-operation of Western intelligence agencies, a trusted partner once again.
Oh, and that film was released only days before this week’s elections to the EU parliament – elections which governments, mainstream parties and established authority throughout Europe are concerned will see big gains by the nationalist, populist, far-right groups which threaten them in France, Germany, Italy and, in particular… I was about to say Austria, but, well, no, not any more, so it seems. What lucky timing. What a fortunate coincidence.
