2023-11-07 22:26:41
SPÖ leader Andreas Babler sees his party on a “good course” despite recently stagnating survey results and a significant gap to the FPÖ. At the same time, he stated on the ORF program “Report” on Tuesday evening that there was still “room for improvement.” Babler did not want to commit to the question of his desired result for the vote in his election by the delegates at the SPÖ federal party conference in Graz this weekend.
Babler said his party had “made a nice move” (since the strange vote in June between him and Hans Peter Doskozil, which only produced the correct result after a new count). “We have the greatest strength in mobilization that we have experienced in decades, we fill the seats, have a good atmosphere, are present in our demands, for which we are also heavily criticized – also from the employers’ side. In this respect, we are on the same page good course.”
At the same time, Babler emphasized that he didn’t want to sugarcoat anything, not even with regard to unity within the party: “You’re right: you can’t expect, in a vote like we had in June, that all members will be there from one day to the next “But we’re on the right track and we’ll see that at the weekend.”
When asked what percentage of delegates he expected to approve, Babler did not respond: “You won’t hear any numbers from me.” “What I would like is for us to get the right result the first time,” he said, looking back on the counting chaos in June. Regarding the surveys, he said that he knew “that we have stabilized, that we are four or five percent stronger than in June.” But: “There is still room for improvement, we want to become even stronger, of course.”
Babler explained that the key proposals for the red prestige project to reduce working hours did not include a specific demand for a 32-hour week by saying that this was “the current decision” anyway. With the “pilot test” provided for in the key proposals, we are entering a “new phase” with which we want to show that we are “implementing it”. However, he made it clear that the SPÖ would not be the first to introduce a reduction in working hours: “I would find that completely immoral” and would send the wrong message as long as nursing staff or hard workers, for example, do not have their working hours reduced.
For Babler, his party did the right thing regarding the postings by the Socialist Youth (SJ) Vorarlberg, which spoke out “for the defense of Gaza” via social media (and similar statements from the SJ Alsergrund). “The toughest measure we have is the arbitration procedure for (party, note) exclusion,” which the SPÖ Vorarlberg initiated immediately.
“You couldn’t be more consistent,” said the party leader. “The social democrats are clear on this issue: there is a right to self-defense, there is solidarity with Israel. There are terrible images that have reached us. And there is also the need to demand political processes again. But Hamas is not Palestine. Hamas is using Palestine, is a terrorist organization and our positioning was very clear.”
“Israel’s right to exist cannot be questioned,” said Babler. In his opinion, the SPÖ has “the highest credibility” on the Middle East issue: “We have a special tradition in Austria of protecting Israel’s right to self-determination, its right to self-defense and its right to exist.” At the same time, it is also important to protect Jews in Austria – on this point the party chairman identified a “failure of the Austrian Federal Government”.
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