{"id":39412,"date":"2019-05-18T18:22:59","date_gmt":"2019-05-18T18:22:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=39412"},"modified":"2019-05-18T18:22:59","modified_gmt":"2019-05-18T18:22:59","slug":"austria-chancellor-kurz-announces-snap-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=39412","title":{"rendered":"Austria: Chancellor Kurz announces snap election"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"body-200771816342556199\" readability=\"97\">\n<p class=\"speakable\">Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has called for the country to hold fresh elections following the resignation of his scandal-hit deputy, Heinz-Christian Strache.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">Kurz on Saturday said a vote should be held &#8220;as soon as possible&#8221; hours after Strache, the vice chancellor and leader of the far-right Freedom Party (FPO), resigned and plunged Austria&#8217;s politics into crisis mode.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">Kurz said he had made his position known to Austria&#8217;s president.<\/p>\n<p>The political turmoil erupted on Friday after\u00a0Strache was\u00a0shown 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.<\/p>\n<p><span>In the footage &#8211; aired by the\u00a0<span><span>German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and weekly Der Spiegel\u00a0<\/span><\/span><span>newspapers &#8211; the far-right Strache was\u00a0<\/span>seen offering state contracts in exchange for political and financial backing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><span>Addressing reporters during his resignation speech on Saturday, Strache said: &#8220;It was dumb, it was irresponsible and it was a mistake.&#8221;<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><span><span>He maintained, however, that he had done nothing illegal and described the sting as a &#8220;targeted political assassination&#8221;.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><span>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&#8217;s senior coalition partners, Kurz&#8217;s\u00a0<span>centre-right People&#8217;s Party.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><span><span>&#8220;After yesterday&#8217;s video, I must say quite honestly: Enough is enough,&#8221; Kurz said on Saturday.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div readability=\"32\">\n<p>\n            SOURCE:<br \/>\n            <span>Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 &#8220;as soon as possible&#8221; hours after Strache, the vice chancellor and leader of the far-right Freedom Party (FPO), resigned and plunged Austria&#8217;s politics into&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":39413,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}