Skip to main content

File photo of Austro-Canadian businessmen and billionaire Frank Stronach listening to journalists questions during a news conference in Vienna September 27, 2012. The eurosceptic billionaire whose success in Austrian politics is sapping support from the far-right Freedom Party rejected comparisons to its late longtime leader Joerg Haider and said in an interview published March 10, 2013, by the Oesterreich newspaper, he would not be content with third place in national elections. Frank Stronach's party - Team Stronach - won a 10th of the vote in two state elections on March 3, months after he founded it, tapping into the roughly one third of voters who oppose bailouts of euro zone laggards such as Greece and Ireland.LEONHARD FOEGER/Reuters

The eurosceptic billionaire whose success in Austrian politics is sapping support from the far-right Freedom Party rejected comparisons with its late longtime leader Joerg Haider and said he would not be content with third place in national elections.

Austro-Canadian Frank Stronach's party – Team Stronach – won 10 per cent of the vote in two state elections on March 3, months after he founded it, tapping into the roughly one third of voters who oppose bailouts of euro zone laggards such as Greece and Ireland.

The car parts magnate's anti-establishment and pro-business campaign is hurting the Freedom Party, which is also eurosceptic but more xenophobic in the mould of Haider, who made the hard right a national force before he died in 2008.

In an interview published on Sunday by the Oesterreich newspaper, Stronach said likening him to Haider was "a very unfair comparison."

"Firstly, I am a businessman with a social vein who has created a lot of jobs. Secondly, I am not discriminatory in any way," the 80-year-old said, pointing out that he had won a Jewish award for social commitment and justice. "Haider would never have won this prize," he said.

A Gallup poll for Oesterreich showed the centrist government coalition parties comfortably ahead, with the Social Democrats (SPO) on 28 per cent and the conservative People's Party (OVP) on 25 per cent.

Freedom, which fared poorly in the state elections, lost two percentage points from the previous poll to stand at 20 per cent, while Team Stronach moved up a point to 10 per cent and the Greens were steady at 13 per cent.

Stronach told the newspaper his party had room to do much better in national elections, which are due by September. Asked if that meant overtaking Freedom for third place, he said: "Why third? I want to be first. I run to win."

But he reiterated that he did not intend to be chancellor even if his party confounded pundits and took first place.

"I still want to live ... A chancellor should be on duty 24 hours a day. I want to change the system but not become chancellor myself," he said.

Heinz-Christian Strache, head of the Freedom Party (FPO) but facing internal rumblings about his leadership, has abandoned his original goal of winning at least a third of votes, which would allow his party could block constitutional amendments.

"It is going to be a three-way race among SPO, OVP and FPO for first place. All are between 20 and 25 per cent. I want to make the jump above 20 per cent," he said in a separate interview with Oesterreich.

Asked about giving up the earlier goal, he said: "Now there is a new rival. Nevertheless we will get first place."

Freedom won 17.5 per cent of the vote in 2008 elections, the SPO got 29 per cent and the OVP 26 per cent.

Strache has flirted with the idea of a right-wing coalition with the OVP, but has also distanced himself from Haider. The last such government in Austria drew temporary economic sanctions in 2000 from the European Union, which said Haider's participation legitimized the extreme right in Europe.

Interact with The Globe