Austria's Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has called for fresh elections in the wake of a video sting that forced his scandal-plagued deputy to step down.
In a statement on Saturday, Kurz called for a new vote to held "as soon as possible" hours after Heinz-Christian Strache, the vice chancellor and leader of the far-right Freedom Party (FPO) resigned over footage that appeared to show him offering government contracts in exchange for campaign help.
"After yesterday's video, I must say quite honestly: Enough is enough," Kurz said.
"The serious part of this [video] was the attitude towards abuse of power, towards dealing with taxpayers' money, towards the media in this country," said Kurz, who heads the centre-right People's Party.
The chancellor said he could not reach an agreement with the leadership of Strache's anti-immigrant FPO on carrying forward the coalition with his People's Party.
He also said a possible coalition with the Social Democrats would not permit the Austrian government to carry out its policies of limiting debt and taxes.
Shortly after Kurz's statement, Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen expressed support for a snap vote and said he would meet with the chancellor again on Sunday to talk over the next steps.
Opposition parties including the Social Democrats, the liberal Neos party and the Greens have also called for fresh elections in the wake of the scandal.
'Dumb, irresponsible, mistake'
In the footage - aired by the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and weekly Der Spiegel newspapers - Strache was seen meeting a woman posing as the niece of a Russian oligarch.
The meeting took place in 2017, shortly before the election that brought him to power as part of the FPO-People's Party coalition administration.
In the video, the source of which the publications declined to reveal, Strache and party colleague Johann Gudenus are heard telling the unnamed woman she could expect lucrative construction work if she bought Austria's Kronen Zeitung newspaper and supported the Freedom Party.
He is also seen discussing rules on party financing and how to work around them, although he also insisted on having to act legally.
Addressing reporters during his resignation speech on Saturday, Strache said: "It was dumb, it was irresponsible and it was a mistake."
He maintained, however, that he had done nothing illegal and described the sting as a "targeted political assassination".
Al Jazeera's Sonia Gallego, reporting from London, described the timing of the scandal as "very bad" for Strache's party with key European Union (EU) elections scheduled for next week.
"This has been quite an extraordinary downfall for the leader of the Freedom Party … just only a week to go until the European elections," Gallego said, adding the incident had raised "a lot of questions" about how the FPO "finances its own coffers".
EU parliamentarian Hans-Olaf Henkel said the FPO "as well as many other right-wing parties in Europe are apparently much-supported by Russia".
"For the first time, with the Austrian far-right party, we have found a smoking gun and that's why Strache had to resign," Henkel told Al Jazeera from the German capital, Berlin.
SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news agencies
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/05/austria-chancellor-kurz-announces-snap-election-190518170506716.html
2019-05-18 18:45:00Z
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