Innsbruck, Vienna (OTS) – The dilemma is well known. The SPÖ is in a leadership crisis. Hardly anyone believes that the Social Democrats are going to vote with Pamela Rendi-Wagner in the National Council elections – hardly anyone knows who will succeed her.
Because it just fits into the dramaturgy. When Pamela Rendi-Wagner was elected party leader following Christian Kern’s departure, which was anything but well orchestrated, the party reacted with a little pride. For the first time in its 130-year history, a woman was elected chairwoman – although she was not well connected in the SPÖ, she was a classic child of the Kreisky years. The daughter of a single mother, who grew up in Vienna’s Per-Albin-Hansson settlement, had a steep career as a doctor. From the top official in the Ministry of Health to the Minister of Health. And then she formulated her big goal following her election as chairwoman. She wants to be Austria’s first elected Chancellor.
Because it just fits into the dramaturgy. Tomorrow is International Women’s Day. After the debacle in the Carinthian state elections, the leadership debate is now boiling up for the umpteenth time. As was the case following the SPÖ’s worst national election result in 2019, for which Rendi-Wagner was responsible, her attempted liberation from a vote of confidence in 2020 and months later following a real prank orgy at the party congress, she is under constant fire. The party leader is hanging on the ropes. But she stands.
Because until half a year ago she might refer to surveys: The SPÖ is in first place. But this opinion has now changed massively. The cynical comment of the comrades in the fall was still: The SPÖ will be chancellor party once more – despite Rendi-Wagner. So it is now said: With Rendi-Wagner, the SPÖ might still reach third place in the next National Council election.
But because no one in the party is willing to openly question Rendi-Wagner, they prefer to point the finger at Burgenland’s governor, Hans Peter Doskozil. He is accused of exaggerated masculinity every time he speaks. He just can’t accept the fact that a woman is at the top.
No, Rendi-Wagner has a different problem. She has a bad team around her, she doesn’t burn for ideas, keeps withdrawing into a group of wagons and hopes that Mayor Michael Ludwig will stand by her. But the SPÖ wants to go back to the Chancellery, and it will probably have to answer the personnel question following the Salzburg state elections. Just knowing that she won’t win with Rendi-Wagner, but not who leads the party in the elections, has nothing to do with red macho logic, but with a lack of orientation.
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