Austrian far-right head urges rivals to let him govern after election win

VIENNA: The head of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, which won this week’s parliamentary election, urged other parties on Saturday to accept that he should lead the next government and warned them against forming a “coalition of losers”.

The eurosceptic, Russia-friendly Freedom Party (FPO) led by Herbert Kickl secured about 29% of the vote in last Sunday’s election, a historic first for a party founded in the 1950s under a leader who had been an SS officer and Nazi lawmaker.

He repeated his election night message that his party’s hand is outstretched to the four others in parliament, and that he believes voters gave the FPO a mandate to govern. The OVP is in a position to be kingmaker since in principle it could either give the FPO a majority as junior partner to it in a ruling coalition or lead a separate, three-way coalition with the Social Democrats (SPO) and a smaller party. Van der Bellen, a former leader of the Greens who oversees the formation of governments, is holding one-on-one meetings

with party leaders in the order they came in the

election.