After Austrian Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen entrusted the FPÖ chief Herbert Kickl with the task of forming a government, the head of the frequently labeled as right-extremist and nationalist party expressed his willingness to form a coalition with the conservative to right-populist ÖVP. “Karl Nehammer is gone, Karl Nehammer is history” Kickl said in a press statement on Tuesday about the resigned Chancellor and ÖVP chief, to whom he had offered coalition talks after the FPÖ’s election victory. “Now I extend the same outstretched hand to the new ÖVP chairman.”
It doesn’t come easily to him. The citizens are asking, ‘Can we still trust this ÖVP at all,’ said Kickl, whose party portrayed him as a “people’s chancellor” during the election campaign.
Kickl is optimistic about the possibility of new elections in the event of a failure of coalition talks. Looking at the budget hole of the previously ÖVP-led Ministry of Finance, which only became public after the election, the FPÖ chief said, “I am sure that the election result would have looked very different 100 days ago” if the people had been aware of all these facts before the election. He trusts himself to “materialize the current opinion poll results in votes and percentages” said Kickl.