It is said that Austrian politics never gets boring, and in fact the past few years, from the rise of ÖVP star Sebastian Kurz to the Ibiza video and numerous corruption investigations, have provided plenty of material for headlines. Now a new one has been added, this time affecting the SPÖ, and one thing is certain: whoever has the damage does not have to worry about the ridicule.
Because on Monday afternoon it became known that the Austrian Social Democrats had chosen the wrong party leader at their extraordinary party conference last Saturday. The governor of Burgenland, Hans Peter Doskozil, and the mayor of Traiskirchen, Andreas Babler, took part. According to the election commission, which announced its results at around 3:30 p.m., Doskozil had won the majority with 37 votes and 53 to 47 percent. Babeler took the result calmly, his supporters, who had celebrated him after an emotional performance, were severely disappointed.
A new party congress is not necessary, says the head of the election commission
On Monday at 3:45 p.m., the head of the SPÖ election commission, Michaela Grubesa, appeared before the public at a surprisingly scheduled press conference and apologized. All the votes were counted correctly, but one invalid vote was forgotten to be counted in the overall calculation. Only after this relative trifle did Grubesa come out with a political sensation: Due to an error by an employee, the results were entered in an Excel spreadsheet in the wrong order and she no longer checked them. Therefore, the new SPÖ chairman is actually called Andreas Babler. According to Grubesa, a new party congress is not necessary: ”In my view, the whole process is verifiable,” said Grubesa. She then apologized to the loser, who was allowed to consider himself a winner for two days.
Because, when the press conference was announced, it became known at the same time that Doskozil also wanted to appear in front of the press at home in Eisenstadt in Burgenland, the first rumors of a “hammer” quickly circulated. But that the Social Democrats, who after a long power struggle, a member survey, the resignation of the previous chairman Pamela Rendi-Wagner and the special party conference last Saturday, would actually make such a banal mistake with such serious consequences, nobody would have expected that. This means that all analyses, all considerations about the future of the SPÖ under the more conservative Doskozil, who wanted to follow a rigid course and had already rejected a coalition with the right-wing populist FPÖ in his victory speech, are obsolete. And the power struggle decided completely differently.
So the winner is the mayor of Traiskirchen, a 50-year-old trained locksmith whose community, a small town of 20,000 inhabitants, is home to the country’s largest initial reception center for asylum seekers. He is a party leftist; lately there had been some excitement over whether he called himself a Marxist. A video from 2020 in which he complained about the EU as an “aggressive military alliance” also caused a stir.
Chosen as the winner, declared a loser after two days: Hans Peter Doskozil, governor of Burgenland, was mistakenly appointed SPÖ leader because of a counting error.
(Photo: Hans Klaus Techt/dpa)
It probably didn’t do him any harm. The first reactions of his fans and supporters, who were still crying in each other’s arms in the Linz Design Center on Saturday, spoke volumes: “I shit myself,” tweeted the Viennese Social Democrat Nikolaus Kowall, who had encouraged Babler to run. The Doskozil supporter Max Lercher, on the other hand, who would probably have become party manager under the party leader who was first proclaimed, wrote on Instagram that he was “honestly stunned”.
Media speak of an “incomprehensible glitch”
The Austrian media immediately commented with a mixture of shock and irony. The Crown newspaper spoke of an SPÖ super Gau. The newspaper Austriawith whom the supposed winner Hans Peter Doskozil had verbally quarreled at the party conference because he announced that there would be no advertisements for this medium under him, wrote of an “incredible breakdown”.
In a first reaction, Doskozil congratulated his victorious opponent. At the same time, he announced that he would withdraw from federal politics and concentrate only on his job as governor of Burgenland. Otherwise there is more than one surprise winner in the power struggle of the Social Democrats: All those who had supported Babler, including the Viennese SPÖ, the trade unions, the SP women, should now cheer. And the approximately 10,000 new members who presumably joined the party because of the Traiskirchner and had hoped for more impetus, more substantive debates, more grassroots involvement and a clear demarcation from government policy should also be happy.