Interesting article about political shift in Austria [View all]

[suffragette]

The article is interesting both for the information it presents and the slant it takes.

The article is about the recent election for the Austrian President. As the article notes, this is a mostly ceremonial role, but the choices being made by the electorate point to a change in the direction they want their leadership to take.

Instead of voting for candidates from the centrist parties, the votes were split between candidates further to the right and left. This demonstrates some dissatisfaction with the centrist political stances that have held sway for a long time.

Van der Bellen,the leftist candidate, won in a very tight race.

However, most of the article is about the right wing candidate and the rise of right wing sentiment and party support there. There's very little about Van der Bellen's views and the policies he and his party will put forth. That scant amount is mostly used in contrast to the right wing views or, oddly, in support of continuance of centrist policies.

Really, would it kill Bloomberg to even acknowledge a few positive aspects of the Austrian people's embrace of a more leftward direction to state policies?


http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/austria-tight-presidential-election-reveals-a-split-nation/

But one thing united Hofer and Van der Bellen despite their ideological differences. Both were protest candidates, mirroring the depth of Austrian dissatisfaction with the status quo. Contenders for the Social Democrats and the centrist People’s Party — the two parties that form the government coalition — were eliminated in last month’s first round of voting.

Those parties have dominated Austrian politics since the end of World War II and winners of all previous presidential elections since then have been backed by one of the two.

Hofer’s strong showing reflects the growth of support for anti-establishment parties across the continent to the detriment of the political middle. Slovak Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak, a Social Democrat, described it as “a continuation of a trend.”

“People are dissatisfied with the traditional, standard political parties,” he said on arrival at an EU foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels. “I really believe it’s time for us to reflect upon it because we must be doing something wrong.”