Champion of Austria's far right killed as car veers off road

Published on Saturday 11 October 2008 20:18

AUSTRIAN politician Joerg Haider, whose far-right rhetoric in the 1990s was denounced as being sympathetic to the Nazis, died yesterday in a car crash.

Haider, 58, the governor of the southern province of Carinthia, had been making a return to national politics with a more moderate line, almost a decade after his party's inclusion in the Austrian government led to European Union sanctions.

His car veered off the road and overturned after overtaking another vehicle, Austrian police said. Haider suffered severe injuries to his head and chest, and was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

The charismatic Haider was leader of the far-right Alliance for the Future of Austria.

"For us, it's like the end of the world," Haider's spokesman and the Alliance's secretary-general Stefan Petzner said.

Haider had attended an event in the town of Velden before the crash, Petzner added.

Politicians from across the political spectrum in Austria expressed shock at Haider's death. Austrian President Heinz Fischer described his death as a "human tragedy". Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer expressed his condolences to Haider's family and described him as someone who had shaped Austria's domestic political landscape over several decades.

In 1999, Haider received 27% of the vote in national elections as leader of the Freedom Party. The party's subsequent inclusion in the government led to months of EU sanctions as Haider's statements were seen as anti-Semitic or sympathetic to Adolf Hitler's labour policies.

Haider had since significantly toned down his rhetoric and in 2005 broke away from the Freedom Party to form the Alliance party, which was meant to reflect a turn toward relative moderation.

Over the summer Haider, who enjoys tremendous popularity in Carinthia, staged a comeback in national politics and helped the Alliance significantly improve its standing in the September 28 national elections. Haider sought to distance himself from his far-right past, which included a comment in 1991 that the Third Reich had an "orderly employment policy" and a 1995 reference to concentration camps as "the punishment camps of National Socialism".

The impact of Haider's death on Austrian domestic politics was not immediately clear. Just last week, he and Heinz-Christian Strache, leader of the Freedom Party, met for what appeared to be a successful attempt to put aside their personal differences in light of their combined success at the polls. Taken together, the results of their two parties came to 28.2% of the ballot, putting them on nearly equal footing with the winning Social Democrats.