Tiroler Tageszeitung: “Vote in Innsbruck, bill in the country”

2023-09-29 20:00:34

by Peter Nindler, issue from Saturday, September 30, 2023

Innsbruck (OTS) – There is so much political explosive in the local council elections in Innsbruck that they will have more of an impact on state politics than ever before. Especially on ÖVP leader Anton Mattle and his coalition partner Georg Dornauer (SPÖ).

The Innsbruck local council election in April 2024 is already being described as one of the most exciting ballots in the state capital. That’s why it won’t leave its mark on state politics. State governor and ÖVP boss Anton Mattle can no more ignore them from his everyday business than can SPÖ chairman LHStv. Georg Dornauer. Although the state ÖVP has treated its blacks in Innsbruck more than neglected for years and Dornauer’s relationship with his urban comrades is rather ambivalent.
After last year’s state elections, the Innsbruck election is likely to be Mattle’s first big test as ÖVP leader. Finally, in the background, he actively encouraged discussions between the ÖVP groups, which had been marching separately and were sometimes enemies for 30 years. A success for the joint mayoral candidate Florian Tursky (VP) would strengthen Mattle, while a defeat would weaken it.
Regardless of this, the People’s Party is generally having a difficult time in the cities. There she lost touch with urbanity, with the realities of life in urban areas. In Hall, Zirl, Kufstein, Schwaz and Lienz they recently lost out in the local elections. In the state capital in 2018, the middle class trusted the bourgeois Green Georg Willi more than the petrified blacks.
And the SPÖ? The fact that social democracy in Innsbruck isn’t even being complained about at the moment should give the party chairman pause. Internally hopelessly divided, the city SPÖ, which has moved to the left, is lost between Tursky, Willi and Markus Lassenberger (FPÖ). On the other hand, Georg Dornauer is finally longing for an electoral success, as the one in the state elections a year ago was extremely modest. The SPÖ stagnated and in Innsbruck it even lost four percent. Things aren’t looking particularly rosy for the local council elections. Dornauer is not up for election, but as always in the spotlight. In the long term, however, the red permanent construction site in Innsbruck will become a political burden for him.
The state Greens, who have been decimated since the state elections, need a green Innsbruck like a bite of bread so that things can improve again across the country. For the urban NEOS, Innsbruck is once again becoming a yardstick. The FPÖ is riding a wave of success, but it is precisely this that is putting the Blues under pressure. The FPÖ must win, otherwise state party chairman Markus Abwerzger would also need to explain. Seen in this way, voting takes place in Innsbruck and the billing is carried out in the same way in the country.