Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen has called on the leading parties to break the coalition "deadlock" caused by the electoral victory of the Free Democrats, instead of putting the far-right party in charge of forming a government.
On 29 September, the Free Party won its first-ever victory in the elections to the National Council, the lower house of the Austrian Parliament, with 28.8 % votes. As the Free Party fell far short of an absolute majority, it has yet to find a coalition partner to govern, but all other parties have so far ruled out the possibility of a coalition with it under its leader Herbert Kickl.
The conservative People's Party, which led the outgoing government, won 26.3 percent of the vote. The Social Democratic Party finished third with 21.1 percent.
After several days of talks with the presidents of all the parliamentary parties, Van der Bellen said in a national speech that he would break with the tradition that the party that wins the parliamentary elections is in charge of forming the new government.
"This time there was an unusual case. It is quite new that there is a winner that none of the other parties want to govern with," Van der Bellen said.
According to the Austrian television station ORF, it is not constitutionally obligatory for the Austrian president to appoint the winner of the parliamentary elections to form the government.
Van der Bellen called on the leaders of the Free Alliance, the People's Party and the Social Democrats to negotiate a way out of the stalemate. He will ask the party leaders to report back to him by the end of next week.
Representatives of the three parties later said they would comply with the president's mandate and hold talks with the other parties.
Xinhua/ gnews - RoZ
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