"Heast, you must ..."

Schellhorn gets caught between the Babler-Fußi front line

"Rudi Fußi is right about a lot of things. You just have to say that," tweeted Schellhorn.

(Bild: Krone KREATIV/APA/Screenshot/X/@pepssch)

On Wednesday, the pink "Zuckerl" negotiator Josef "Sepp" Schellhorn beat the drum for Rudi Fußi, thereby making a fool of his potential coalition partner, the SPÖ. The surprise was great and the corresponding social media post disappeared again on the same day. However, there is still a need to talk ...

"Sepp, what are you doing?" is the name of a successful video format by pink MP Schellhorn. That's what political observers thought on Wednesday when the NEOS man praised the SPÖ rebel Fußi in a tweet - and in doing so, he made a fool of his "Zuckerl" negotiating partner Andreas Babler. He wrote: "Rudi Fußi is right about a lot of things. You just have to say that."

The SPÖ leader is in direct competition with the PR consultant who has applied for the party leadership. Following an inquiry from krone.at to the NEOS, which went unanswered, Schellhorn deleted his tweet. 

SPÖ: Nothing to do with the deleted tweet
This did little to help. The "grumpy entrepreneur" of the NEOS is increasingly steering his party between the fronts, into a storm called social democracy. Fußi launched a counter-attack on Wednesday evening: "At today's coalition summit, the SPÖ's only concern was that Schellhorn should delete a positive tweet about my press conference. Completely crazy. NEOS let the panicked SPÖ dictate that a mandatary has to delete a tweet? Crazy. Simply crazy."

When asked by krone.at, a spokeswoman for SPÖ leader Babler explained that she did not know why Schellhorn had written or deleted his tweet. "You have to ask the author." This did not happen due to pressure from the SPÖ. The red functionaries are now visibly annoyed by Fußi's accusations. He claims, for example, that the SPÖ made his health data public - without providing any proof. Federal Managing Director Klaus Seltenheim announced on Wednesday that he would hand the matter over to a lawyer for legal examination, as "the accusations and insinuations are completely unfounded".

"Heast, you'll have to sort it out yourselves!"
Schellhorn, who negotiates important issues such as the economy, infrastructure and combating inflation for the NEOS, tried to verbally catch Babler's opponent on Thursday morning: "Hey, you'll have to work it out for yourselves! I have nothing to do with this information!", declared the pink mandatary on Platform X.

Schellhorn had to concentrate on "other, important things". "I want to hold on to that." He had previously posted a song alluding to the uproar surrounding his support for Fußi, which has since been deleted. "Alles 1 Scheiss" by the artist Nino from Vienna.

As part of the coalition negotiations, the party leaders of the ÖVP, SPÖ and NEOS met for a clarifying discussion on Wednesday afternoon, following a dispute over the salary increase for civil servants. "We are making progress", they said in a joint statement afterwards.