After a two-year break, the SPÖ once again organized a political Ash Wednesday in the Oberwenger Stadl in Judenburg in front of a full house with around 200 guests. This time, host Max Lercher lashed out at all parties in the National Council, especially the ÖVP: “I think corruption came first and that’s how the ÖVP was founded.” Guests of honor were his National Council colleague Jan Krainer and AK President Renate Anderl.
Accompanied by the “Seetalern”, who got the audience in the mood with yodelling, shallow jokes and folksy classics, Lercher came up with satire and irony and also referred to an interview in the “Kleine Zeitung” with Alt-LH Franz Voves, who will be doing his next week celebrating 70th birthday. Voves had spoken out in favor of Vienna’s Mayor Michael Ludwig as SPÖ party leader. “If every elder in the Social Democracy tells us who the best party leader is, then Peter Kaiser’s management team will soon be larger than the party members in the SPÖ. Then we’ll have almost more leadership as a basis. That’s what we want, I think not me.”
Appropriately for the event, Lercher denounced the rising price of beer: “Vice Chancellor Werner Kogler is a Styrian, but if he makes drinking a luxury good, he doesn’t need to come home anymore.” The audience cheered. He described the participation of the Greens in the government as the “biggest sticking action” ever and “they have given up on themselves”.
“Favourite opponent” is the ÖVP, according to the former SPÖ federal manager. The blacks – “turquoise is over, the Messiah (Sebastian Kurz, note) has walked across the sea” – are responsible for “any standstill for 40 years”. “We have to show that,” he motivated his party members. “The ÖVP talks, but doesn’t do anything for us. The only functioning organization of the ÖVP is the Farmers’ Union. They saved up the army and now it’s being debated that the Farmers’ Union should be sent out to protect the border,” said Lercher.
Lercher said of the FPÖ: “Without our weakness, there would be no strength in them. The only little man for whom the Freedom Party makes politics is Herbert Kickl.” It is clear to Lercher that the Blues will stand up for the retention of cash: “Otherwise they can no longer trade with full sports bags.” NEOS are “nice, but difficult”. Gerald Loacker is a “pension robber of a special class”, but “45 years of contributions are enough in the country,” Lercher underscored the SPÖ’s position on raising the retirement age.
AK President Anderl was annoyed in her speech about the federal government’s lack of measures to combat inflation: “A one-time payment is once and then fizzles out. We don’t need alms.” Other countries would do something and “they are doing the right thing”. For example, Spain would abolish VAT on groceries. “When our government says it’s only a few cents, you can see that they don’t know how to handle money.” Among other things, Anderl called for the gas and electricity markets to be separated and for the excess profits of the energy companies to be skimmed off. And when the trade association is the first to applaud a cut in benefits for part-time workers, “I’m going to puke.”
Krainer, who was invited to the lectern as “Mister of the Committee of Inquiry”, presented his final report from the Committee of Inquiry, which he intends to publish next week – title: “The ÖVP is so corrupt”. “If I tell everything that’s in it, then I’ll miss the train,” but so much in advance: “That’s systematic corruption.”
He demanded that rents should no longer be allowed to rise, “they are high enough”. “And what gets on my nerves the most’: In the pandemic, the big corporations made more profits than in 2019. And that with our money because we paid the subsidies. And the government says: We give them even more for the higher ones energy prices.” It cannot be “that part of society always falls on the butter side and the others can pay”. It has to be the end of it. “What we need are new elections and that corporations and millionaires pay a fair contribution.”