2023-05-24 08:03:52
The SPÖ leadership was taciturn on Wednesday before the start of the National Council session. The day after the heated committee meetings, which only brought certainty about the departure of Pamela Rendi-Wagner as party leader, but not yet about her successor, neither Rendi-Wagner nor her vice club boss Jörg Leichtfried wanted to comment on the turbulence. The ÖVP and the Greens called for a return to objective work.
The SPÖ has to wait until Saturday next week for certainty as to who will lead them into the future. In long committee meetings, the Social Democrats finally decided on Tuesday to stick to the original plan and to decide on the chairmanship of an extraordinary party conference in Linz. The winner of the member survey, Hans Peter Doskozil, and Andreas Babler, who came in second, are the candidates. Rendi-Wagner was only third.
Wednesday morning she did not want to comment on any of this. She couldn’t elicit more than a “Good morning” from the waiting journalists when she arrived in the plenary session. When asked if this was one of her last appearances today, she answered succinctly: “Exactly.” Leichtfried was at least confident that the party conference on June 3rd would make a “good decision”. From the plenary session he expects that “hopefully something will be done about inflation”.
The SPÖ is trying to put pressure on here and has announced that it will not agree to any more legislative proposals from the governing parties until its wishes are fulfilled. The first victim of this veto announcement will probably be the Energy Efficiency Act, which is on the agenda of the National Council on Wednesday. A two-thirds majority is needed, but neither the SPÖ nor the FPÖ want to agree.
On Wednesday, before the start of the session, the ÖVP and the Greens called for this blocking attitude to be given up on two-thirds matters in Parliament. “That doesn’t make sense from a democratic point of view,” Social Minister Johannes Rauch (Greens) reprimanded the Social Democrats in the press foyer after the Council of Ministers.
When asked who he would like to head the SPÖ, Rauch replied: “It’s not a government request, that’s the SPÖ’s decision.” He only wishes that the SPÖ would return to “factual work”. “We need a constructive SPÖ, not one that is self-absorbed.” ÖVP club chairman August Wöginger also emphasized that he would like “the SPÖ to be able to act again here in Parliament”. He hopes that “the carnage within the party will come to an end quickly,” he said about the SPÖ leadership dispute.
Chancellor Karl Nehammer (ÖVP) made a similar statement in the current hour of the National Council. He asked “in all humility before the legislature” to refrain from this blockade – “for the good of the country”.
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