VIENNA: Austrian lawmakers on Thursday elected for the first time a far-right politician as parliament president despite the country’s main Jewish organisation criticising him for having paid “homage to Nazi criminals”.
The far-right Freedom Party (FPOe) won national polls for the first time last month, gaining almost a third of the votes, though it has been unable to find partners to form a government.
But as the biggest party, it nominated lawmaker Walter Rosenkranz, 62, a lawyer and a former presidential candidate, as the parliament’s president.
In the assembly’s opening session following last month’s elections, Rosenkranz was elected with 100 out of 162 valid votes that were cast in a secret ballot, outgoing parliament president Wolfgang Sobotka said.
Rosenkranz has been widely criticised for being a member of a far-right student fraternity known for its strident pan-German nationalism.
In his speech after the vote, Rosenkranz vowed to continue the country’s fight against anti-Semitism, dismissing accusations he posed a threat to the Jewish community as a “lie”.
In a debate before the vote, conservative Chancellor Karl Nehammer said his party was “committed to... the tradition” of the strongest party nominating the president to lead parliamentary proceedings.
Freedom Party leader Herbert Kickl naturally praised Rosenkranz for his “loyalty to democracy, the constitution and the rule of law”.
The Greens were among those who opposed the FPOe nominee, saying it would be a “devastating signal” for someone from the far-right to head the parliament.
Rosenkranz has been a member of the far-right student fraternity “Libertas” since 1981, whose charter used to prohibit the integration of Jews, specified in a paragraph dating from 1878.
“This paragraph has long been abolished,” Rosenkranz recently told Austrian media, stressing that “all sorts of things can be exhumed from the internet”.
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