2023-06-23 22:01:08
Issue of Saturday 24 June 2023
Innsbruck (OTS) – The red division in Innsbruck fits into the political tradition of the state capital. Parties break up into individual interests, everyone acts once morest everyone else. No wonder that turnout in the 2024 local elections will probably fall below 50 percent.
What is going on in Innsbruck city politics? It really reveals a horrible picture of a lack of political responsibility, in which everyone acts and schemes once morest everyone, depending on the Föhn situation. The fact that the Innsbruck SPÖ blows itself up ten months before the municipal council and mayoral elections is therefore only logical, because the urban comrades have been hopelessly at odds for years, and in the state elections last year the social democracy in Innsbruck lost a whopping four percentage points. Success looks different.
At the same time, the red division fits into the local political image of the state capital. The fragmentation has tradition, even in the SPÖ. In 2000, the social Innsbruck challenged the city SPÖ and was soon history once more. The political system has been fragmented for decades. Because in municipalities or cities, the party binds even less than is the case today anyway. The community of values and sentiments is being replaced by individual interests. If the functionaries can no longer get together, then a group splits off. So much for ideology that unites or separates the personal. Especially in the bourgeois camp.
Because he had fallen out with ÖVP mayor Alois Lugger, lawyer Willi Steidl founded the Tiroler Arbeitsbund in 1971. Steidl was able to politically work his way up to the city council. The later governor Herwig van Staa clashed with Lugger’s successor Romuald Niescher and the city’s ÖVP and catapulted himself into the mayor’s office in 1994 with “For Innsbruck”. At the time, the Blues fell out with Rudi Federspiel, who eclipsed them until they were reunited with the Freedom Party in 2018. The Greens were also affected last year: three municipal council members turned their backs on Mayor Georg Willi and now want to be the better Greens with “Innsbruck worth living in”.
But back to the SPÖ: In recent years, the comrades have neglected to exploit the (conflict-prone) weaknesses of the ÖVP and “Für Innsbruck” as well as the sometimes clumsy actions of the Green majority group in general and Mayor Willi in particular. As of Friday, they’re not even a council club anymore. It mightn’t get any lower, one would have thought and was promptly taught otherwise.
All in all, the parties should not be surprised in 2024 if voter turnout from a catastrophic 50.4 percent five years ago continues to plummet. After the ongoing political dispute at all levels, why should it be any different?
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