World News | Austria's Far-right Freedom Party Names Presidency Candidate
Get latest articles and stories on World at LatestLY. Austria's far-right Freedom Party has chosen former lawmaker Walter Rosenkranz as its candidate to challenge liberal incumbent Alexander Van der Bellen in the country's presidential election in October.
Berlin, Jul 13 (AP) Austria's far-right Freedom Party has chosen former lawmaker Walter Rosenkranz as its candidate to challenge liberal incumbent Alexander Van der Bellen in the country's presidential election in October.
The party said its leadership nominated Rosenkranz, 59, unanimously on Tuesday evening. In 2016, Freedom Party candidate Norbert Hofer lost to Van der Bellen in a runoff vote — which had to be rerun on the orders of Austria's Constitutional Court after the party claimed widespread voting irregularities in Hofer's initial narrow defeat.
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Van der Bellen, 78, announced in May that he will seek reelection. He's expected to have broad mainstream support in the October 9 vote, with a runoff to be held on November 6 if no candidate secures an outright majority.
Three other candidates, none of them representing a party in parliament, have already come forward.
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Rosenkranz was an unexpected choice to challenge for the presidency. He was a lawmaker from 2008 to 2019 and headed his party's branch in Lower Austria province for several years.
The head of state is largely ceremonial but plays a prominent role in times of domestic political crisis. Repeated bouts of domestic political turmoil during Van der Bellen's six-year term have given him high visibility.
After conservative Chancellor Sebastian Kurz's governing coalition with the Freedom Party collapsed in scandal in 2019, the president appointed an interim Cabinet of nonpartisan experts under Brigitte Bierlein, then the head of the Constitutional Court.
Kurz, who had returned in a new government with the Greens, resigned last fall. The country had three chancellors in two months, with Kurz's successor, Alexander Schallenberg, giving way within weeks to current Chancellor Karl Nehammer.(AP)
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)