Austrian People

While Waldheim reacts as expected, the reaction of the Austrian people will give us interesting clues in regard to their character and feelings. I hope for them that powerful and a multitude of voices will be loud in the whole country asking for the thorough investigation of their president. How else can the Austrians maintain the assertion that they had been raped by the Germans and that they were fundamentally different in outlook and deeds from them? We know that the Germans of today feel a collective shame.

The conservative junior partner in the coalition government, the Austrian People's Party, decided to become an opposition party, a move that may lead to instability and elections next year. In a failed effort to prevent the far-right Freedom Party of Joerg Haider from entering the government in a coalition, the Social Democrats had urged the People's Party to not join the opposition. Final results confirmed that the Freedom Party finished second.

Austria holds parliamentary elections Sunday against a backdrop of heavy anti-foreigner sentiment. The two mainstream parties that have ruled Austria since 1955--the Socialists and the Christian Democratic Austrian People's Party--have been put on the defensive by the small Freedom Party, which has made gains with its anti-crime, anti-immigrant platform.

A plane carrying 11 people, including a government minister, crashed into a lake today near the Swiss border, and all aboard were presumed dead, officials said. The plane, a nine-seat Aerocommander AC-90 from Austria's Rheinthalflug airline, was preparing to land at Altenrhein just over the border when it went down, said airline spokeswoman Renatte Moser. "We have to fear that there are dead," she told the Associated Press.

The Jerusalem Post admitted Friday that it published a fake letter from Austrian Foreign Minister Alois Mock to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher suggesting the resignation of Austrian President Kurt Waldeim. In the letter, Mock was supposed to have agreed to a suggestion that Waldheim be persuaded to resign on health grounds, because allegations that he had hidden membership in a Nazi group and concealed his wartime activities hurt Austria.

Austrians vote Sunday in federal elections closely watched by nervous Central European neighbors as a barometer on the rising right. Populist Joerg Haider and his archconservative Freedom Party are expected to boost their parliamentary share to at least 20% on the strength of a campaign that has stirred up resentment of foreigners in Austria.