The former head of the BZÖ, Gerald Grosz, wants to officially announce his candidacy for the election as Federal President in June. At the presentation of his new book in Graz on Wednesday, he announced that he is “in the final phase of the application period”. Unless a “brick falls on his head,” he’s applying for the position. But he remained grounded in the face of the competition: “I’m a realist: it’s a very difficult undertaking.”
The official announcement will take place on June 21 in Vienna. Until then, the website needs to be completed and other details clarified, among other things. His fourth book – titled “Time for Cleanliness” – along with his third book “Freedom without ifs and buts” is the “substantive basis for a candidacy,” he said on Wednesday.
The books deal with the curtailment of fundamental rights and freedoms in the wake of the corona pandemic and political corruption scandals of recent decades. You can read about his first “encounters with corruption”, at the time as a young press spokesperson in the cabinet of Minister of Social Affairs Herbert Haupt (FPÖ, later BZÖ), but also about the Eurofighter case.
“Yes, that’s how we are” – and Van der Bellen “blind in one eye”
“The Republic of fallen guilt must come to an end,” he said, contradicting Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen, who said after the Ibiza scandal: “We are not like that.” Grosz says: “Yes, that’s how we are. Van der Bellen himself is “blind in one eye”. That’s why he wants to irritate the others with his planned candidacy: “You can still dream”, he told him when was asked how realistic his chances of winning the election were.
Grosz was confident in getting the 6,000 signatures needed for the candidacy, and he also sees the financing of the election campaign possible: “It will be a different election campaign,” he announced. He was convinced that he had the “strongest social media presence” of all political actors in Austria through his seven digital channels – from Instagram to TikTok. “I plan to use it.”
“The second most important decision after partnering with my husband”
Incidentally, he had carefully considered the decision to flee for months: “After working with my husband, it was the second most important decision in my life.”
Source: Krone
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