MAY BE DEFERRED

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 69, Issue 75, 8 January 1949, Page 3

MAY BE DEFERRED

Elections in Austria (Erom Hubert Harrison—Reuter’s Correspondent). (By Airmail)' VIENNA. Leaders of the People's Party, Austria’s largest parliamentary party at the moment, have given authoritative statements during recent days that elections cannot be expected in Austria until October next at the earliest. Under the Constitution, they must be held by next November at the latest and Socialist opinion had been that they should be held in the spring. The reasons given for not holdingelections until autumn are: 1, Before elections can be held there must be a census of the people. Since the last elections half a million prisoners of war have returned from abroad, many thousands of refugees have returned from western Europe and America, considerable numbers of workers have also returned from Germany, Poland, Prance and other lands. There has also been considerable movement of the people from the eastern provinces, under Russian occupation. 2, When ’a census has been taken so that the" exact population of every district is known, it will be necessary to redistribute seats and modify the size of constituencies. 3, It will be necessary to get permission from the Allied Council to the election plan. 4, The People’s Party is strongly advocating a cliange in the election law.

A Communist Argument

Points two and four are attracting much attention, especially from the People’s party leaders. They declare *that it would be grossly unfair and undemocratic to hold elections based on a distribution of the population which is not in accordance with the present situation. The Communist press argues that this is only a mam oeuvre by the People’s party. majority to secure an advantage. Their intention is, the Communists state, so to redistribute seats m Parliament as to give greater weight to the western provinces where they are strong and less to the industrial areas of eastern Austria where the Communists are relatively strong. All the most important speakers of the People’s party in recent week-ends have mentioned the need for a reform of the electoral law. The provision to which they object most strongly is the rather stiff "list svstem” which was introduced as part of the proportional representation system at the end of World War I. The State Secretaryvfor the Interior, Ferdinand Graf, made this point in several recent speeches. He urged that a system is needed m Austria which will give the voter more control over the list of candidates. Some members of the People’s party have even said that they are in favour of doing away entirely with the list system and substituting a system whereby each individual constituency elects its own candidate, as in Great Britain. It is obvious that whereas the Socialist party, which feels very confident of increasing its vote at the next election, is all for an early date, the People’s party is seeking reasons to put off the elections as long as posIn the last elections the Peoples Party secured 85 seats, the Socialists 76, and the Communists 4. At that time there was a coalition of the three “democratic” parties and in spite of their small representation in Parliament, the Communists were given one Minister in the Cabinet. Now ‘ the Communists have left the Government and the real division .is between the two-large Government parties on the one side and the Communists, with Soviet support on the other. Thus, although there is a great difference of opinion between the next election to secure tire maximum advantage each fob itself, even Vice-Chancellor Schaerf. the Socialist leader, has admitted in recent speeches that the success of the Government has been due to the collaboration of the two big parties, and suggested that :it must go on after the elections too. It is expected that the election campaign will be stormy, and the People’s Party are already making appeals for discipline and order during the campaign.

Over 1,000,000 New Voters

The fact that there are over 1,000,000 new voters compared with the last election, and that these are mainly composed of returned prisoners of war from Russia, America, France and Britain, together with some 400,000 less-implicated Nazis who have now been amnestied and had their civil rights restored, makes the big parties a little insecure. The Socialists hope to reverse the situation of the present coalition so that they lead the Government instead of being, however slightly, inferior in numbers arid influence. The People’s Party is making great efforts to maintain and even to increase its strength. It is appealing especially to the farmers, who represent about one-third of the population and is working especially actively in Lower Austria, where the farmers are most powerful and most conservative. Their hope of power depends upon the 400,000 lesser Nazis. The, People’s Party hope that although they are not a Fascist party, they will be more likely to attract the votes of former minor Nazis than the Socialists, who are all Marxists, or the Communists, against whom they were so strongly indoctrinated. Unless a fourth party is created in the intervening year, Austrian political experts believe that many of these votes will in all probability go to the People’s Party.