Given recent developments in Austria, I thought it would be good to focus on something other than America and focus on what is frankly the most stunning political scandal currently on the continent, and potentially this year. To summarize, last week a video came out showing the incumbent vice-chancellor and head of the Freedom Party in Austria, talking openly with a supposed Russian oligarchs niece, who turned out to be a plant by unknown agents, about her buying a newspaper and functionally making it a propaganda piece for their party and in exchange receiving lucrative government contracts from the party once in power. The leader, Hanz-Christian Stratche, resigned the next day, his party was removed in power and not long after the Chancellor himself, Sebastian Kurz himself withdrew his party, the Peoples Party, from the government, initiating a snap election in September.
He has now been removed from the Chancellorship by a vote of no-confidence, orchestrated by the center-left Social Democrats party.
So now there’s going to be an election for the entire government and with Kurz out of power, Austria is now run by a caretaker government of technocrats in the meantime. Functionally, Kurz still has a very good chance of getting in, and with his hard-line immigration stance, a good chance of taking seats away from the Freedom Party rather than losing any. On the other hand, he has faced a lot of criticism for his general handling of government, supposed power grabs, poor cooperation with government and actions during this scandal alone could lead to consequences. Also, frankly, polling these days is questionable at best so who knows which way the election will fall.
CM's Thoughts 