österreich entscheidet

Polls close in Austria mid-afternoon local time today and the some six million eligible voters in a country of nine million seem posed to elevate foreign minister and ÖVP (Österreichische Volkspartei, the Austrian People’s Party) chair Kylo Ren Sebastian Kurz to chancellor and head the coalition of conservative, anti-immigration and anti-EU factions to form a government, dispensing with the need for seeking cooperation and compromise with minority liberal voices in the Bundesversammlung. This snap-election is the conclusion of a series of inconclusive votes that occurred last year and were revisited over the summer but failed to break a statuary threshold needed to validate the outcome. The thirty-one year old Kurz has pledged that his party’s platform reflect his personal crusade and frightening coincides with Vienna taking the helm of the rotating European Union presidency—and just as Brexit arrangement are finalised, associates of a single opinion that Brussels meddles far too much in national affairs and that the UK is better off outside of the customs bloc.