ÖVP members jump ship!

Kickl’s course causes Blacks to leave the party

Christian Stocker's (r.) about-turn against Herbert Kickl (l.) was too much for functionaries(Bild: ROLAND SCHLAGER)

In a statement, the Hallein Economic Association sharply criticizes the ÖVP's new course. The functionaries even leave the party and resign from all functions. The ÖVP is "no longer a bourgeois, Christian-social movement".

The words hit home: "There will certainly be a new chairman who has more flexible values, like Christian Stocker, for example." With this sentence, among others, the two ÖVP-Wirtschaftsbund functionaries Christopher Habersatter and his deputy Harald Wasserbacher officially vent their anger on Facebook.

"Fascist tendencies"
 The reason? The new Kickl course adopted by the black federal party. As reported, the ÖVP wants to form a coalition with Herbert Kickl following Nehammer's resignation under the new interim party leader Christian Stocker. The Hallein functionaries are not happy about this.

They become clearer: "The Freedom Party under Herbert Kickl is a party of extreme right-wing and anti-Semitic individual cases (songbook affair), exhibits fascist tendencies (the right has to follow politics) and is anti-European. They stand for division, play on the fears of the population and show a worrying proximity to authoritarian rulers and regimes such as Orban or Putin," they write, among other things.

U-turn leads to anger
Habersatter and Wasserbacher are also annoyed by the "subjugation of the ÖVP". They leave uncommented the "180-degree turn" of their new party leader, who said: "The Kickl-FPÖ is not only a danger to democracy, but an equally great danger to Austria's security."

It then becomes even clearer in the direction of Vienna with the words: "The brutalization of civility is the result. The ÖVP is no longer a centrist party." And: "All this no longer corresponds to our image of a bourgeois, Christian social movement of the center."

This is why the ÖVP candidate for local council, Habersatter, and Hallein's former ÖVP city councillor Wasserbacher are resigning from all functions in the Economic Association and the Chamber of Commerce for "moral reasons" and leaving the party.