Wake up call for the grand coalition

The leader of the right-wing populist FPÖ party, Heinz-Christian Strache, secured the success of his party in the elections with just one topic, the liberal-conservative daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung writes: "With his pompous and kitschy staged appearances Strache stoked the people's fear of foreigners, foreign infiltration and Islam. … Votes can be won with anti-Islam slogans in other countries too, as the elections in the Netherlands and Belgium have amply shown. Most recently Sweden has been forced to acknowledge that the population's fear of foreigners needs to be taken seriously and not simply swept under the carpet. The [social democratic] SPÖ and the [conservative] ÖVP should take this to heart. The election results in Vienna are a wake up call for the grand coalition, which is showing symptoms of paralysis. There won't be any more elections in Austria until 2013. This provides a unique opportunity to seriously tackle the problem of immigration. Only in this way can the worrying rise of the far-right party be stemmed."

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