Peter Stummer has had enough. With the words “Enough” the deputy mayor of Ried im Innkreis informed the SPÖ state leadership under State Councilor Michael Lindner via WhatsApp that he was leaving the party. “You leaders are trampling on our social democratic values because of power games. You don’t seem to care at all about the people in this country,” was his devastating verdict.
His anger was initially triggered by the Klaus Luger case. The SP mayor of Linz had passed the hearing questions to the former artistic director of LIVA, Dietmar Kerschbaum, before his appointment – this became known on Tuesday last week. Luger had previously denied this.
Luger’s resignation as mayor did not appease Stummer, who remains deputy mayor. His anger was further fuelled by the events in Vienna, which were the last straw.
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Bures criticized Babler
There, the second president of the National Council, Doris Bures, described Babler’s election program as “lacking in seriousness” in a letter to the party presidium. The Viennese SP’s top candidate for the National Council election also criticized the way the strategy paper came about, saying it lacked broad involvement of the party. The federal party rejects this.
The program will not be presented to the public until the beginning of September. What is certain is that it contains many well-known red demands, including the millionaire tax and a test run for a four-day week. Bures criticizes the “countless tax increases while at the same time demanding numerous free state services.”
The program mentions a higher bank levy and the reversal of the corporate tax cut. At the same time, there will be free dental treatment for under-23s, free lunch (and in future stages also breakfast and snacks) for students and a school without private tutoring. Tuition fees are rejected, the legal right to blocked partial retirement is supported.
Election campaign kicks off in Linz
Babler did not want to comment on Bures’s move, but he sensed “great discontent about this action” in the party. Vienna’s mayor Michael Ludwig tried to calm things down on Saturday, saying that the Vienna SPÖ was united behind Babler.
In any case, Stummer has had enough of this bickering. Although he supports Babler “completely”, he no longer wants to be part of the SPÖ.
For state manager Florian Koppler, this is “regrettable”. “We have to come together in the party and everyone has to work on regaining trust,” he sees as a clear mandate. He can understand that the past few days have been an emotional rollercoaster ride for many officials. With Luger’s resignation, “most of the calm” has returned to the state party.
How relaxed the situation really is will become clear at the federal election campaign launch in Linz’s AEC on Thursday.
LIVA affair is “far from resolved”
With the resignation of Mayor Klaus Luger (SP), the signs in Linz city politics are pointing towards an election campaign. As reported, Luger had also commissioned an expert report in the LIVA affair to find out who had issued the hearing questions. It is now known that it was he himself.
The report in question is just one reason why the Brucknerhaus scandal is far from being solved for Vice Mayor Martin Hajart (VP), who is demanding full access to the documents. This is a “basic requirement” for an investigation and necessary to quickly put an end to the cronyism in the town hall.
Many questions remain unanswered for Hajart: Among them, how expensive the report commissioned by Luger was and how high Stefan Illek’s consulting fee was. Luger had briefly brought the former Marcel Hirscher press spokesman Illek on board as a consultant in the LIVA affair. According to OÖN information, his remuneration was probably capped at a low five-figure sum. Once this was exhausted, the collaboration quickly became history again.
Cross-party pact?
Hajart now wants to work out a stability and enlightenment pact with the other factions. This is also because he wants to prevent “good and already agreed projects” from falling victim to the mayoral election campaign. Luger’s successor will be chosen by direct election.
For Climate Councillor Eva Schobesberger (Greens), the scandal shows that the city urgently needs to change its holding structure and its control instruments. She sees the combination of the obligation to maintain confidentiality in the supervisory boards plus the lack of control by the city’s owner representative, i.e. the mayor, as problematic.
At the next municipal council meeting – scheduled for September 26 – Schobesberger wants to submit a motion to review the holding structure in order to determine whether it would not make sense to reintegrate various companies into the magistrate’s office and thus strengthen control by the municipal council.
