Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has called for the country to hold fresh elections following the resignation of his scandal-hit deputy, Heinz-Christian Strache.
Kurz on Saturday said a vote should be held “as soon as possible” hours after Strache, the vice chancellor and leader of the far-right Freedom Party (FPO), resigned and plunged Austria’s politics into crisis mode.
Kurz said he had made his position known to Austria’s president.
The political turmoil erupted on Friday after Strache was shown in a sting video meeting a woman posing as the niece of a Russian oligarch in 2017, shortly before the election that brought him to power.
In the footage – aired by the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and weekly Der Spiegel newspapers – the far-right Strache was seen offering state contracts in exchange for political and financial backing.
Addressing reporters during his resignation speech on Saturday, Strache said: “It was dumb, it was irresponsible and it was a mistake.”
He maintained, however, that he had done nothing illegal and described the sting as a “targeted political assassination”.
Opposition parties including the Social Democrats, the liberal Neos party and the Greens called for a new election in the wake of his resignation, ratcheting up the pressure on the FPO’s senior coalition partners, Kurz’s centre-right People’s Party.
“After yesterday’s video, I must say quite honestly: Enough is enough,” Kurz said on Saturday.
SOURCE:
Al Jazeera and news agencies
