When the Krone tabloid accuses you of low standards, you know you've blown it. And Austria's best-selling newspaper didn't mince its words on Monday, dubbing "a dishonourable farce" the television debate hours earlier between the country's two presidential hopefuls.
Ahead of Sunday’s second-round run-off, Austria’s ATV channel’s experiment – a political debate with no moderator – rapidly descended into car-crash television.
Facing off across a table, Green Party candidate Alexander Van der Bellen presented himself as the respectable, pro-European choice as head of state.
Meanwhile Norbert Hofer, the 45-year-old candidate for the right-wing populist Freedom Party (FPÖ), made familiar anti-EU swipes amid demands for direct democracy and Austrian-first social policies.
A prickly Hofer began attacking his Green Party challenger. He took the bait and the debate descended rapidly into a slanging match.
Van der Bellen, a 72-year-old economics professor, accused Hofer of being a cheeky liar. Hofer, who until then had presented himself as the moderate face in the extreme right FPÖ, let his mask slip somewhat by dubbing his opponent a “shitty c*nt”.
The widespread opinion yesterday: Austria’s 70 year-old democracy had just hit a new low. “Both disgraced, office damaged,” tweeted political analyst Thomas Hofer.
In Sunday’s vote Hofer hopes to repeat a first-round performance that saw him pull in almost 37 per cent support, shocking Austria’s political establishment.
Between insults, Hofer told viewers that his Green challenger was the “in-crowd candidate” while he was the “people’s candidate”.
By contrast Van der Bellen warned that the FPÖ presidential hopeful was planning an authoritarian system by sacking Austria’s government. “This vote is a choice between a co-operative style and an authoritarian style,” said Van der Bellen.
His warning drew on threats made by Hofer that, if elected president to the Hofburg palace on Sunday, he would use his presidential powers to pull the plug on Vienna’s grand coalition government within a year unless it does more to tackle the jobless rate.
That warning ups pressure on Christian Kern ahead of his swearing-in today as Austria’s new chancellor, a week after his Social Democrat (SPÖ) predecessor resigned.
Kern faces a tall order in a tight time-frame: to retool a fading grand coalition of SPÖ and conservative People’s Party (ÖVP) with new proposals to tackle high immigration and joblessness coupled with low growth.
Within hours the new leader has to decide, too, if his SPÖ should throw its backing behind Van der Bellen in the hope of seeing off the FPÖ challenger.
Looking ahead, Kern, formerly manager of Austrian state railways, has to tackle the existential crisis facing the SPÖ by explaining to voters, defecting in droves for the populist right, just what exactly Austrian social democracy stands for in 2016.
Before then the two presidential hopefuls meet again on Thursday for a final television debate – this time with a moderator.
