Criticism from a powerful person

“Unserious”: Bures settles accounts with Babler’s program

Doris Bures has a powerful voice in her party and as President of the National Council.

(Bild: APA/Tobias Steinmaurer)

Doris Bures, second President of the National Council and powerful SPÖ politician from Liesing, has written a letter to the members of the SPÖ Executive Committee slamming Andreas Babler's election program, which has just been presented there. She fears, for example, the suspicion of "unseriousness".

Five weeks before the election and three days before his first ORF summer interview, Andreas Babler is coming under massive pressure. After the tug-of-war over the resignation of Klaus Luger, the convicted liar who, as mayor of Linz, stumbled over the appointment of a friend as head of the Brucknerhaus, Babler received the next piece of bad news on Friday afternoon. Or rather: a letter addressed to all SPÖ presidium members, sent by none other than Doris Bures. The second President of the National Council is considered the most powerful woman in the SPÖ, she is a close confidante of Vienna's Mayor Michael Ludwig and knows what such an incendiary letter can trigger.

Andreas Babler is not only fighting for votes on the streets - even his own party does not seem entirely convinced ...

(Bild: Loy Robert)

Luger's resignation was the straw that broke the camel's back
It was probably Babler's behavior around the resignation of the mayor of Linz that prompted Bures to act. Luger told the "Krone" that, contrary to Andreas Babler's claim that the party leader had called him to inform him of his ultimatum, he never received a call. Instead, another powerful SPÖ member contacted him on his cell phone. It was the Second President of the National Council, Bures. She tells Luger that the Presidium was not informed of Babler's plan to set up an arbitration tribunal.

The Presidium meeting on Thursday seems to have been the straw that broke the camel's back for Bures - and she wrote the letter, addressed to all members of the SPÖ Presidium.

In the letter, Bures destroys Andreas Babler's party program, which was presented in the Presidium on Thursday, with subtle but clear formulations. It begins innocuously. "The present program is a compendium of the most diverse, quite well-sounding demands, but in my opinion it has too little focus in terms of real political implementation. I fear that this does too little to underpin the credibility and serious creative aspirations of social democracy."

And further: "The relations of the individual policy areas show too little focus and prioritization, but instead get lost in loving detail - in relatively insignificant areas. For example, savings in public administration are promised by reducing the size of government cabinets and PR budgets, while at the same time increasing the number of posts in the financial administration by ten percent." Another almost humorous criticism of the content: "The research section succinctly announces increased funding for basic research, while the agricultural section announces an increase in the proportion of organic beekeepers from the current three percent to ten percent."

"Suspicion of unseriousness"
Massiver: "The focus on countless tax increases with simultaneous demands for numerous free state services could give rise to the suspicion of unseriousness in view of the difficult financial situation of the Republic caused by the ÖVP government."

However, her criticism at the Executive Committee meeting on Thursday was primarily directed at the process by which this election program came about: it lacked "fundamental democratic legitimacy". Bures: "Unfortunately, this is not the first time that the SPÖ's publicly presented demands have been insinuated to have been decided on a broad democratic basis. I wanted to point out this undesirable development because it weakens us internally and externally and makes us vulnerable."

The internal match in the peak phase of the election campaign has officially begun.