Vienna - Rising prices and immigration are emerging as key topics in Austrian general elections due September 28, with right-wing parties expected to win up to 25 per cent of votes. Shortly after Social Democratic Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer stepped down as party chief in June, the conservative People's Party (OVPe), the junior partner in government, announced the end of the coalition and called for early parliamentary elections.
Starting into the short campaign, several political parties held their opening rallies over the weekend.
Werner Faymann, new head of the Social Democratic Party (SPOe), renewed his call for halving the sales tax on food from 10 to five per cent, in order to help people affected by inflation.
The measure, which Faymann would like to be passed by parliament before the polls, was necessary "so that purchasing power gets stronger again," Faymann said at a rally on Friday.
"We won't wait until an economic downturn", he told a crowd of 3,000 party members in Vienna.
In July, Austria's year-on-year inflation rate stood at 3.8 per cent, slightly lower than the average 4 per cent of countries using the euro. Food prices climbed 7.4 per cent in July.
The Social Democrats are engaged in a head-to-head race with the People's Party over who comes out strongest from the elections and gets to nominate the next chancellor.
After trailing behind the OeVP for several weeks, most polls published over the weekend showed the SPOe ahead at 27 to 28 per cent, compared with the conservatives at 26 per cent.
The Social Democrats, who received 35 per cent of votes in the last elections in 2006, are expected to lose voters to the right-wing Freedom Party (FPOe), led by Heinz-Christian Strache.
Although Strache also wants to fight inflation, he puts a lot of stress on the issue of foreigners and asylum seekers, whom he accuses of taking advantage of Austria's generous welfare system.
"There has to be an end to criminals and villains and misusers disrespecting us, and us having to finance that with hundreds of millions of tax money," Strache told a crowd of 2,000 on the main square of Linz on Friday.
Boosted by voters disillusioned by the lack of results from the current government, right-wing parties could win over a quarter of votes on September 28, if current predictions turn out to be correct. They show the FPOe at up to 20 per cent of votes, and Joerg Haider's BZOe at up to 5 per cent.
Haider, the former leader of the FPOe before he formed the offshoot Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZOe), told supporters in Graz on Saturday he wants to fight high gasoline costs by opening government- subsidised petrol stations.
Although Haider seeks to distance himself from the radical language of his rival Strache, when it comes to asylum seekers, his proposals are even more extreme.
He could picture electronic tags for every asylum seeker in Austria, he recently told the Profil magazine, so that their movements would be easier to monitor.
Even the usually moderate conservatives of the People's Party, led by current Vice Chancellor Wilhelm Molterer, have joined the race for right-wing voters.
"Enough is enough!" one of the OeVP's campaign posters says. "Those living with us have to learn our language. No immigration without German language courses. No privileges without duties."
So far, only the Social Democrats and the Green party, currently predicted to win up to 13 per cent of votes, have led campaigns that do not address anti-immigration sentiments.
Although both of the current governing parties have said they would not form coalitions with Strache's FPOe, social democratic leader Faymann is seeking support from the right-wing parties for his tax-cut proposal.
Looking at the current polls, however, a renewed but weakened cooperation between social democrats and conservatives could turn out to be the only possible stable majority in parliament, where the coalition would face an emboldened right-wing opposition.
