Green Versus Green
Birgit Hebein's resignation from the Green Party is indicative of an internal struggle between pragmatism and ideology
Servus!
It is an unwritten rule of Austrian politics at the present time that everything will eventually circle back to one topic and one question. The topic is immigration and chancellor Sebastian Kurz and his People’s Party’s (ÖVP) hard-line stance on the issue. And the question, with that in mind, is: How long can this current coalition between the ÖVP and the Greens survive if the latter is shackled to the migration politics of the former?
The Taliban’s impending return to power is about to trigger a human rights catastrophe, one that will surely set in motion another wave of flight and emigration from Afghanistan. A coalition of human rights organizations including Amnesty International and Caritas has called on the Austrian government to aid and assist the rescue of imperiled and endangered people from Afghanistan, believing Austria has the capacity to take in at least a few hundred asylum seekers. These organizations were joined in their call by the country’s president, Alexander Van der Bellen, and the Greens’ spokesperson on foreign policy and human rights issues, Ewa Ernst-Dziedzic.
Kurz, however, is unlikely to be moved. Afghan refugees, the chancellor has said, will be provided help in the countries bordering Afghanistan—not in Austria. His view is shared by interior minister Karl Nehammer, who recently called for the establishment of ‘deportation centers’ in central Asia to handle Afghan refugees. Austria, for its part, is currently home to a community of 42,000 people born in Afghanistan, two thirds of whom are men and around 20 percent of whom are currently unemployed. Relative to the overall population, Austria’s is the second-largest Afghan community in Europe.
On Sunday, the former leader of Vienna’s Greens, Birgit Hebein, announced via Facebook that she was leaving the party. Hebein—who was part of the team that negotiated the coalition agreement with the ÖVP—said that no longer has any feeling for green politics in their present form. In particular, she criticized the way the party has blithely gone along with the ÖVP on a right-wing immigration and asylum policy that has seen Austria fail to take in families from the Kara Tepe refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos and deport children in the dead of night to countries that, in some cases, they had never seen. The Greens, Hebein argued, have sacrified one of its core issues: human rights.
On the one hand, it is certainly true that, in recent months, Hebein had become a marginal and marginalized figure within her now-former party. As deputy mayor, she led the Greens into last fall’s municipal elections in Vienna and emerged with a record result for the party. But having failed to negotiate a new coalition agreement with the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ), the party unceremoniously excluded her from all possible leadership positions on Vienna’s city council. On December 30, she announced her intention to step aside as party leader. Seen this way, her drift away from the party is hardly surprising. She already had one foot out the door.
Yet Hebein does speak for the left or Fundi wing of the Greens, one that has always been uncomfortable with its coalition with the ÖVP but went along with it anyway. The Fundis are becoming less and less tolerant of the argument, put forward by the likes of vice-chancellor Werner Kogler, that being in power is far better than the alternative: being on the outside looking in on another ÖVP coalition with the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ). The coalition, Kogler would also argue, is the Greens’ only chance to implement is green economic agenda including subsidized national rail travel and an eco-minded tax system. But in pursuing that narrow agenda but ignoring human rights’ issues, Hebein would argue, the Greens have also given up a part of themselves.
Bis bald!
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