Austrian Chancellor Resigns, Putting Coalition at Risk

VIENNA — Chancellor Franz Vranitzky, who has headed the Austrian government for more than 10 years, resigned Saturday, raising serious questions about the survival of this Alpine nation’s ruling coalition.

Vranitzky announced his resignation after an emergency meeting of his center-left Social Democratic Party, which marked its worst showing ever in elections last October. One of Europe’s longest-serving rulers, he told reporters it was time to hand the government over to younger and more dynamic leaders.

The 59-year-old former banker said he will be succeeded as chancellor and party chairman by Finance Minister Viktor Klima.

Vranitzky’s resignation was not totally unexpected; he had long complained that he was growing tired of politics. But it follows an unusually tumultuous period in Austrian government, when tensions within the ruling coalition were strained nearly to the point of rupture over the privatization of the country’s most prestigious bank.

Austria has been ruled since World War II by Vranitzky’s Social Democrats and their conservative partner, the People’s Party. In addition to the two parties’ problems within the coalition, they also have seen their standing eroded by Austria’s far right.

Indeed, waiting to step into any breach is Joerg Haider, the leader of the right-wing nationalist Austrian Freedom Party, who is known for his anti-immigrant tirades and for praising the “work ethic” of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Haider has been gaining in popularity, cutting into Vranitzky’s base of working-class support and nearly equaling the Social Democrats’ vote in Oct. 13 elections for the European Parliament.

“It will not be long before the Freedom Party will enter government,” Haider said last week, reiterating his intention to occupy Vranitzky’s office by 1998--possibly in coalition with the People’s Party.

Vranitzky, who has fought to keep Haider out of government, came to power in 1986, the year Kurt Waldheim was elected president. After Waldheim’s Nazi past caught up with him and brought international reproach, Vranitzky worked to improve Austria’s image.

Perhaps Vranitzky’s most important contribution was his acknowledgment, in a 1991 speech to parliament, of Austria’s complicity in the Nazi Holocaust. It was the most explicit such recognition by an Austrian official.

Vranitzky guided Austria through economic prosperity in the late 1980s but more recently oversaw painful austerity measures. In a personal triumph, he persuaded Austrians to vote to join the European Union.

His personal popularity, outstripping that of his party, helped keep the Social Democrats afloat, as did his moves to modernize the organization and push it toward the political center, Austrian analysts said.

“He was a very unsentimental Social Democrat, from a working-class family but not attached to those traditions,” Herbert Lackner, editor of the weekly newsmagazine Profil, told Blue Danube Radio. “He brought a modernist streak to the Social Democrats.”

It is not clear whether Klima has the same stature to hold the party together and wage the increasingly bitter battles within the coalition.